How I See the World

ACME and Airplanes

2011-10-14T21:32:00.002-07:00

Tonight I saw a wonderful concert by the Arizona Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME). Pieces and performances were consistently outstanding, but among the works were two classics, Boulez's Dérive and Crumb's Eleven Echoes of Autumn. In addition to my primary reaction — bliss — the concert got me thinking.

A good piece of contemporary art music is like an airplane: it is evidence of the glorious and almost-unbelievably-complex heights people can reach when they aren't devoting all their energies to killing each other. A popular song is like a bike; maybe a techno a groove is a motorcycle. Some people (the Beatles come most immediately to mind, but of course there are many others) have created cars that have endured and become classics in their own right. But art music aims higher.

Think of a symphonic work as a jetliner. Instead of two makers, Boeing and Airbus, here there are thousands. Each one feels a little different, takes you to a different place. Composers try to outdo each other in amenities, meals, and build quality. I think of a big John Adams piece, for instance, as an intercontinental cruiser. It is exquisitely comfortable, features soft-touch interior surfaces, and is polished to a beautiful sheen. And we've all boarded a plane made by one of his competitors — or admirers. They tend to feel plastic-y and decidedly store-brand. But Adams will take you somewhere entirely different from Crumb. And Boulez wants to show you how the machinery and technology works.

In the end, the most important thing is that you are transported to the other side. And what marvelous creations Boulez and Crumb have provided for the journey.

Life Lately

2011-06-23T11:17:00.003-07:00

I went to a good show last night: the CD release party for the Sugar Thieves. The Dry River Yacht Club played too (what? violin and cello in a rock band?) and artists painted while the bands played. It was a good show (these are not your average slacker bands — these are seriously talented people), and it was great to get out and see people make something other than money.

I'm grateful, then, to be going to London soon for the Festival Chorus to premiere my Three Wandsworth Songs. In a way, I feel disconnected from the part of me that makes music, that is open to experience, that is unexamined. I think this trip will go a long way toward helping me remember what that feels like.

I'll need to, because as soon as I get back, I'll be hunkering down to work on a new piano piece. I was recently awarded a Renee B. Fisher Composer Award, which is a commission to write a work for their 2012 piano competition. I've started some scratchings, but I'm not sure I trust them yet.

In other news, Teriann and I essentially took off the month of May from life in general to paint/renovate our townhouse (more on this, with pictures, later). We got so burned out on it, in fact, that once we moved in at the end of the month, we didn't really spend any time unpacking or making it a home. We've spent June with friends and family, and frantically trying to get ready for our London trip. Once we're back, though, that will be way we spend our evenings, and I expect to have it done within a couple weeks. Housewarming party at the end of July, perhaps?

Ketchup

2011-04-07T15:40:00.009-07:00

OK, so I really meant "catch-up", but don't you think it just makes a better title this way? Tasty, too.

I haven't been in hiatus — quite the opposite, in fact, I've been busy! In the first three months of the new year, I've composed three new works (one of which was premiered early this month — more on that later) and begun teaching at Paradise Valley Community College. I'm enjoying the teaching and the college itself has a great vibe. I'm glad I managed to wedge my foot in the door.

Budget Woes

I'm now convinced that a large part of the peace I felt in the UK had to do with the distance I put between myself and American politics. Now that the distance has disappeared, I find myself worrying and puzzling at levels not felt since the W years. Congress has reduced itself to a farce (the tragically misguided Tea Party is pushing back on a comically inept and inarticulate left), and Obama has started, or continued, his re-election shift to the center (sure, we can afford another war and to extend the Bush tax cuts another two years, right?).

The flashpoint is the latest tempest in a pot of budget tea: shutting the government down over millions when there are, in fact, trillions that need to be discussed. The whole argument is completely devoid of any kind of reason. That is, until I heard this on NPR today:

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/07/135211947/your-turn-fix-the-national-debt

Give it a listen. It is, for a moment, cathartic and refreshing: here are two people, Alan Simpson, a prominent Republican, and Kent Conrad, Democratic chair of the Senate Budget Committee, talking sense. They appear to have used reason and logic in coming to their conclusions without forgetting respect for those they don't agree with, compassion for those less fortunate, and a healthy does of common sense.

But the implications — I've decided in my pessimism — are actually pretty terrifying: sadly they spend more time talking about why their plan won't be adopted than they do about the plan itself. Congress has made an absolute farce of itself, where no one seems capable of steering away from the worst possible outcome. This latest battle is largely due, of course, to the Tea Party, who has even taken Speaker Boehner hostage: he now won't even take the $33 billion deal he originally asked for. They dare not peek into the defense budget, but funding for the National Endowment for the Arts must go. It's enough to raise a guy's blood pressure. This guy's.

A Proposition

Now, it's no secret I love NPR. Many conservatives have espoused the viewpoint that if NPR (and for that matter, arts organizations of any kind) is so great, let the free market handle it, and people will donate generously.

To those people, I offer a proposition. If military spending is so vital, so necessary, and so rewarding, then let the free market take care of that, too. Surely people will recognize how much paying for weapons of mass destruction enriches their lives, and the coffers of Lockheed Martin will overflow with the generous outpourings of average Americans. Halliburton, too, would see its true potential reached if only it could loosen the shackles of government support, right?

The truth is that the conservatives want to compel citizens to pay for things that make life awful, like cruise missiles, while eliminating public support for the things that make the world a little less awful, like healthcare and culture.

Some, including myself, may have a different vision of what government should be.

I'll leave you... with this.

We Need a Little Christmas

2010-12-22T23:42:00.003-07:00

I am a sucker for Christmas music. The stuff — especially the old recordings I heard every year as a child — just makes me melt. But this year, while driving home in a particularly melancholy (okay — cranky) mood, a verse of We Need a Little Christmas struck me.

For I've grown a little leaner,
Grown a little colder,
Grown a little sadder,
Grown a little older,
And I need a little angel
Sitting on my shoulder,
I need a little Christmas now.

For such a peppy, carefree tune (which I will always associate with my Grandma), these are dark sentiments. Suddenly the "need" in the title seems a little gritty. If I follow this thread to its cynical end, the whole reason we throw ourselves at the Christmas season is because regular life is so lousy.

I don't always spend my time souring over the back-handed good wishes in Christmas music, though. In fact, because I am a creature of habit, I'll continue to enjoy and revel in everything Christmas, thank you very much, cheery music and all. It's just that without a bit of melancholy for perspective, happiness is just ignorance.

So with (or perhaps in spite of) all the perspective I can muster, I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas: be nicer than you would be, happier than you should be, and thankful for the opportunity to do so.

Hello Again, America

2010-11-11T16:09:00.005-07:00

Part of why my transition to American life has been less than smooth probably has to do with politics. A small part, yes, but there's no use in denying that I am a political animal.

Obama's election roughly coincided with me leaving the country, and though I always kept an eye on U.S. news, there's a difference between looking in when you choose and being immersed in it. In my naivety, I thought the U.S. had gotten a little more, well, sensible. We elected a Constitutional Law professor rather than a journalism major without a passport, for example. The public was squarely against the ongoing war in Iraq. I thought things, broadly speaking, had calmed down from the ultra-partisan, bitter, angry mood that characterized the Bush years — a mood that, both in Washington and living rooms, made reasonable discussion about political issues impossible.

Boy was I wrong.

I was airlifted into a jungle of Tea Parties, Rallies (both for sanity and against), and onslaughts of negative, largely untrue campaign ads. The stench of anti-incumbent fervor was as thick in the air as in 2008. Once again, it was impossible (is impossible) to actually discuss issues — like the healthcare reform bill — because stakes had already been immovably planted. And by God if someone had planted their stake across the turf from yours, that's it. No discussion. No debate. Just negativity, and snide gotchas based on grossly untrue assumptions and exaggerations.

I'm not opposed to betraying my bias — this is a blog, not a news outlet — but I am opposed to ideology clouding reason, judgment, and discussion. I'm not so much worried about politeness as I am about closed-mindedness.

So the Republicans were swept into power. They are going to use the skills they demonstrated in the last decade to bring the deficit under control (See? No one cares to remember who started digging the deficit). They are going to re-examine healthcare reform. They are going to use the skills they demonstrated in the last decade to bring unemployment down (See? No one cares to remember under whose watch all those jobs were outsourced).

Fine. I think that compromise is by and large a force for good in politics (and just about everything else in life). If something is actually a good idea, everyone should agree, right? Yes... except when petty, partisan politics gets in the way of real progress.

But I digress; my main intention here is to relay two conversations about Europe I've had lately with people of vastly different backgrounds, perspectives, and — you guessed it — political affiliations. Please put that last bit aside for the moment, though, because which party someone supports is secondary to their way of thinking, and that's what I'm after.

First, a friend told me, "Gosh, you must be glad to be back in America." I asked what he meant, and his response was simple: "After being over there in Europe for two years and seeing what they deal with, it must feel good to be back in the States." No evidence, no argument. Just: America is superior. I was tempted to press him for more, but it's never polite to talk about politics, is it? (see above) so I let him off the hook.

Because I know him and his background as a business owner, I'll go ahead and make a guess: "It must be nice not to have your earnings and everything you buy taxed at such an exorbitant rate." Just in case this isn't what he meant, I've heard this sentiment echoed by others, so I feel safe in saying that this is a view shared by many Americans.

The other conversation, however, was with someone in the classical music industry (as I may be one of these days) who spends a month or two every year in Europe. He complained about the lack of government support for the arts. "The fine arts are worth a 1% sales tax to every Arizonan and to every American. The correction is necessary because our economy has not developed in a way that rewards artists. In bygone centuries it did, but no longer."

The first view is essentially capitalistic, the second, socialist. We have been well-trained to regard the first term with positive and the second with negative connotations. Such connotations aren't of much practical use, though.

At their cores, both ideas are predicated upon ugly concepts: capitalism in its purest form leads to a kind of feudalism. Very few ultra-wealthy, many poor. Socialism in its purest form takes incentive away from creation, from ingenuity, and from personal skill and achievement. Neither is an enticing model of civilization. It's the blend of the two that makes society work.

Roads, firefighters, and national defense are all socialist in nature; anything that is governmental whatsoever goes against pure capitalism. So almost no one thinks that eradicating all traces of socialism is a good idea (except, you know, those fun-loving anarchists), and no one thinks ridding the planet of capitalism will work either.

What we argue about — what we fight and claw each other about — is what the right mix is. Should healthcare be socialized or not? What is the right balance of welfare that reduces crime and the homeless population but maintains incentive for people to get back to work? Sure, there are issues out there that don't fall in this category, but I think you'll find that most of them do: for what issues should there be few shareholders (as in a company) and for what issues should every member of society be a shareholder (as in government)?

People fall over the spectrum: I know a Dutch man who is frustrated with what he considers the 'nanny state' in his country and how it leads people to not work to their full potential. Similar concerns are common in the UK: the government just reformed some policies, for example, by which someone would make less money by getting a job.

It is my opinion, though, that the U.S. has far more to learn from Europe than vice versa. As someone who payed for my healthcare with taxes for the last two years, I have to tell people who are afraid of it (which more often than not means they don't understand it) that it's not a bad thing. The U.S. healthcare system is viewed as barbaric (and rightly so) across the Atlantic: how could someone's medical care depend on how much money they have? And being able to attend concerts, exhibitions, and culture of every kind for little or no money is due in no small part to government support of the arts. Americans marvel at such things on vacation (I heard it constantly: "All these museums, free!") but call it wasteful at home.

The truth is that on many fronts — transport, justice, foreign relations, quality of life — a nation is measured by its government because the government represents all its people, not the privileged few in the board room. Should we choose to invest in that government — in the people — everyone will share in the rewards; and those who choose to invest in the privileged few better hope they're lucky enough to be one of the privileged few.

Europeans have taken this more to heart than Americans (perhaps because they endured centuries of feudalism), and I think their balance of capitalism and socialism is operating better than ours at the moment. In fact, I've only been back a little more than two months now, and O how I miss the place!

Steinbeck's Time

2010-10-05T08:47:00.003-07:00

I'm back stateside, and on an American lit. kick to mark my (inconspicuous) return. First up is Steinbeck's East of Eden, a book I wanted to read well before Oprah told me to — Steinbeck is one of my all-time favorites.

I've been hunting around for a universal theory of time perception for the last few years; that is, ever since time slowed to a standstill when I moved to London. And I think I found it in — of all the unlikely places — East of Eden. Near the beginning of chapter 7:

"Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatsoever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy—that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it.— Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all."

Soaking It Up

2010-08-30T10:34:00.001-07:00

Strangely, I don't feel like I'm going to move back across the ocean in the morning. I went through a period of being saddened — and oddly worried — by the move, but the closer it gets, the more accepting I am of it.

This has to be at least in part due to our exploits in the city lately: in just two weeks we've rampaged through two Shakespeare plays at the Globe, La Bête, The Woman in Black, and eight concerts at the Proms. Yes: rampaged. And we've been checking off our list of London things-to-do-and-see with equal abandon. One laundry list is enough for one post methinks, but suffice it to say that we've been doing our best to get out and enjoy it while we can.

So long, London. See you again soon, I hope.

Julia Fischer

2010-08-16T07:10:00.007-07:00

This afternoon, I rather unexpectedly had one of my most affecting concert experiences ever: the violinist Julia Fischer playing an Ysaÿe solo sonata and the Franck sonata.

I almost didn't get in; though it was a short concert starting at 1 p.m., Cadogan Hall was full to the brim; I was deep in the returns queue and only three people behind me got in.

I've been a fan of Julia Fischer for years: her recording of Brahms' concerto was enough to make me a follower, and I've seen her play live once before — as soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe playing Mendelssohn's concerto. I'm enough of a fan to have wanted to go despite the program (Ysaÿe and Franck aren't typically my sort of thing). But this was a solo recital, where I'd really be able to hear her play, close, and without orchestra.

I expected an outstanding performance, but what raised this concert from outstanding to memorable was the brief, mid-concert interview she gave. Because the concert was part of the BBC Proms, a presenter (the concert was broadcast live) asked her a few questions between the two pieces.

One question involved the flood of recordings available today — including the useful glutton, YouTube — and how they compare to the early recordings made by turn-of-the-century violinists. Julia explained that the early recordings often sound so different from those of today "simply because they didn't have the possibility of YouTube; they couldn't listen to all the other colleagues... They played in their own style with their own ideas."

The simple concept struck me. Musicians playing in their own way because it's what they wanted and what they thought their audience wanted. None of the obsessively self-conscious comparison of recordings performers subject themselves to these days. Surely they must have listened to other violinists and their teachers, but the whole culture about the 'correct' way to approach a piece may not have existed then — certainly not to the point it does now.

(That can only be a positive thing: look, for example, at the wild diversity in musical styles being written in the first half of the 20th century. In contrast, history has shown us more recently that 'taste police' have turned out to at best narrow-minded and at worst oppressive.)

She's not saying the technology isn't beneficial, she's advocating independent thinking. Welcome words to my newly-graduated ears.

She went on to discuss one particular way the changing times had altered interpretation: "Today we are trained to be very rhythmical in style, and at that time not necessarily everyone had a metronome at the age of five... so of course the playing was much freer. And there is a certain difference between being rhythmical and playing like a metronome, which is actually not playing in rhythm."

There's a bit of new music phobia (you know the sort I mean: "Any deviation from the tempo is an error!") dashed. I've fretted for years about the propensity for modern composers to spell out even the tiniest change in metronome marking for the performer. In my view, either they'll understand the music and interpret it or they won't.

Finally, she spoke about the Franck sonata she was about to play, a very well-known and often-performed piece. "It's a dangerous thing to believe that just because something is well-known, you have to make it sound special." Amen to that; if you see a musical with a well-known song, chances are that song will be tortuously 'individual'.

And then she said something that hit home to me not just as a musician or conductor, but as a composer: "Trying to do something completely different from everybody else is as bad as doing it exactly the same as everybody else."

As she spoke, I felt like someone was picking at the knot of musical neuroses and paranoias the College planted, unraveling its tangled threads into orderly, observable thoughts. Perhaps this has only exposed my own niggles and worries rather than detailing the outstanding music I was lucky enough to hear. But the two are inseparable: her comments got to the heart of what I've been trying to digest of late, and I was left somehow unguarded, open, receptive.

The whole experience was overwhelming in the best way. To find a performer who really thinks about music is rare enough, but it comes through in her playing. Her interpretations are mature, perfectly paced, and never showy; she can be confident as well as vulnerable. I haven't found deeper, more meaningful performances anywhere.

Her performance of the Franck was, predictably, outstanding. I say predictably because I already knew it would come from a genuine artistic impulse. She said before she began:

"Even if you know it, I hope you will enjoy it anyway."

Musical Happenings of Late

2010-08-09T13:12:00.003-07:00

A few nuggets of musical happenings of late:

I got my first commission on Friday — a proud rite of passage for any composer. Mine may have come later than some, but it certainly helps to fill the post-study void. The new work, commissioned by the Festival Chorus in South London, will be premiered next July.

Also, an old piece of mine, Well, I Was Watching TV on April 29, 2004... will be performed at the Society of Composers National Conference in South Carolina in November. It's the only piece I've written for jazz big band, and I still consider it one of my favorites. You can listen to an excerpt of it here.

And finally, Teriann and I had another unusual London experience last night when we went to see Partial Gathering play in the Old Vic Tunnels. The venue, only recently opened, is a Victorian brick cavern beneath the tracks of Waterloo station, and as you might imagine is completely immersive. Dark, creaking, rumbling, and musty-smelling, the space is fascinating in its own right, but they put on quite a show. Ruaidhri and Corentin are friends from my oh-so-recent time at the Royal College, but they're turning into contemporary electronic stars of sorts. The best thing about these guys — apart from their hair, of course — is how honest and unfussy their music is; they say what they mean to, and boldly. Pleased to have met you, lads.

Second Anniversary Trip

2010-08-07T07:50:00.000-07:00

I've been putting this off. I've been procrastinating. Partly because this, recounting our last venture out to Europe before we come home, is slightly bittersweet, and partly because I haven't been looking forward to the task of selecting — out of our roughly 400 photos of the weekend — the best ones to post here. They're all incredible. You'll see what I mean.

I suppose that now that two months have passed, though — our trip was in early June — I should face it.

Our destination was Bled, Slovenia. Slovenia was, until 1992, a Soviet satellite, and pretty much everyone I talked to back in Phoenix said, "Umm... where's that?" It is nestled in the corner made by Italy and Austria, and, though a small country, has both beautiful Adriatic coastline and the southern edge of the Alps.

This latter part was where we visited: Bled sits just where the Julian Alps flatten out.

It's not hard to see that this was recently Soviet territory: neighboring towns we saw from the train looked gray and unpromising, and much of the architecture is drab and square (although, to be fair, that may have been more a fault of the 60s and 70s in general). What is remarkable, though, is the rebirth going on in Bled itself. Everywhere, people are determined to make the most out of what was a lousy situation. The plain, concrete hotels on the lakeside all sport fledgling crawlers whose vines half-cover the grayness. It's effective, and a far more elegant solution than wrecking everything and building from scratch. New buildings, on the other hand, are built with taste, quality, and an eye for detail. If only Britain invested the same level of attention and taste in its new buildings.

And the people are kind — which always influences how you feel about a place.

All this would make a very nice holiday destination, but what pushes it over the top — and drew us there — was the outstanding natural beauty. And an excellent place to take it in was our first stop, Bled Castle, perched on a cliff over the lake.

They were having their annual 'Medieval Days' festival, which basically entailed some sword-fighting, some archery, and a whole lot of dressing up.

But the best thing about the castle was the view.

The lake is peaceful and calm, and is ringed by a wide, comfy footpath. It's not terribly long, but it takes ages because you have to stop constantly to take pictures!

Along this journey, we rented a rowboat and rowed out to the island for a closer look.

Easily one of the best traveling days I've ever had. And it was only the first.

The next day, we rented bikes and took a ride through the countryside to Vintgar Gorge.

It was incredible; I've seen murkier water in aquariums.

I can't imagine a better way to spend our anniversary. Mmmm lunch.

One last word about Bled: the food. It was not only really good (since it's so close to both, you can get proper Italian food and proper German food), it's really cheap. A glass of wine with dinner costs four or five pounds in London. In Bled? One Euro. One. In fact, the prices for just about everything around town are just right. The restaurants are really nice, but no one dresses up in them. It's laid back because everyone else there has been out hiking too. What a great town.

The airport we flew into was across the Austrian border in Klagenfurt, so on our way back out, we stopped to have a look around. Klagenfurt is home of one of Europe's largest model parks, Minimundus. There were elaborate models of most of the continent's landmarks, and we enjoyed seeing our previous travels in miniature. Like our previous year's anniversary trip: Neuschwanstein.

Teriann with the Tower of London.

Klagenfurt is also near the second of Mahler's three composing huts. We saw his first one last September, which was on open, grassy bank by a vast lake. This one, however, where he wrote his Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Symphonies, was tucked away in dense forest. Only a few hundred yards from another lake, the trees were so thick you couldn't tell it was there at all. It was quiet and secluded.

And just down the hill, his villa on the Wörther See.

The things I'll miss about Europe.

Bittersweet? Mixed feelings? Yes. But there's no doubt that the glass is half full.

Have a look at the many other photos in the facebook album.

Layers: Inception

2010-08-04T04:06:00.003-07:00

I've seen Christopher Nolan's Inception twice now. How rare and wonderful a thing nowadays is a movie you can't completely understand on the first viewing.

By the way, I've been very careful, and there are no spoilers ahead.

After seeing it the first time, I was left with a couple of reservations about the film. The plot itself isn't particularly convoluted, but there was something vaguely unsatisfying that I couldn't put my finger on. Yes the music isn't quite right and I could edit out five to ten minutes of pointless gun-fighting scenes (this film actually would have been better with a smaller budget), but that wasn't it.

I couldn't get the film out of my head for a week and a half, so with a few theories in mind, I saw it once more to sort it out. As I watched again, I realized that what I was confirming wasn't the basics of the plot — as I said, it's reasonably straightforward — but the presence of another layer cleverly built in.

Layers are, for me, the most satisfying thing in art. It's why I'm less intrigued by painting and sculpture than by literature, music, and film. In Bach, Brahms, Adams, or Schwartz, in Dickens, McEwan, Kaufman, and Hitchcock, layers mean all sorts of different things, but always enrich the end product.

Someone could watch it once and understand (most of) the plot and have an enjoyable ride, but I would argue there's a deeper level to the film that only rewards those who do a little digging.

That — cinematic Bach in the age of one-layer pop tunes — is truly satisfying.

Saturday

2010-08-04T03:39:00.003-07:00

I just finished reading Ian McEwan's recent novel, Saturday. McEwan is one of my favorite writers, but that opinion is founded on admittedly little. Before this, I'd only read Enduring Love, which was good enough to seal his place on my future reading list, and Amsterdam, which was, to be kind, very weak. I haven't even gotten yet to the novel considered by many to be his best: Atonement.

But Saturday, I'm happy to report, is terrific. Better, if anything, than Enduring Love. He is better than anyone else I've read at detailing the inner workings of the mind, of slowing down the blur of mixed-up thoughts that rush by at machine-like speed to a more human, understandable pace. In so doing, he achieves that near-impossible feat of squeezing thoughts into syntax and grammar without harming or altering them in the process. (An unfortunate byproduct of this is that when time resumes its speed and the action in the plot moves along, it does so clumsily. He's clearly more at home with writing from the inside, and I think the best McEwan novel possible would perhaps take the space of only minutes or seconds and contain no plot whatsoever.)

So why am I writing about it? I read plenty of books that I like or dislike, and to mention them all here would be as dreary for me as for you.

Because while art is littered with works shining lights into every nook of the past and trying desperately to imagine every possibility of the future, there are precious few books — or artworks of any medium — that illuminate the present. Shock Doctrine, which I wrote about here some months ago, was one, but as the old saying goes, if you want the truth, read fiction.

Saturday is, at its very best, an elaborate and detailed snapshot of what life in this time is like, what life in London is like, and how the conflicting forces of technology and humanity play out — in one's mind and in society. There are passages that feel like he's written my thoughts with greater clarity than I can think them, and I'm very grateful that he has.

Six Weeks

2010-07-22T15:15:00.005-07:00

Well, at long, long last, a decision. Teriann and I will be moving back to Phoenix — home sweet home — on August 31.

I was bursting with anticipation, but now I'm overflowing with mixed feelings. To be sure, I'll be elated to be home. There are too many people I haven't seen in too long, and I'm eager to get on the right side of our cash-flow. Here's an unlikely statement: I can't wait to start working. But there are people who I'll dearly miss here in London. And let's face it, leaving the most vibrant, culturally rich — in a word, best — city in the world (I feel no remorse in calling it so) is bound to be difficult. We are bracing ourselves for reverse culture shock.

In fact, if there's one challenge ahead that truly worries me (and mind you there are no shortages of challenges), it's to find a way to avoid merely existing. I want to keep pushing — from a career point of view as well as artistically and personally — and I want nothing more than to bask in the comfort of home without losing sight — or reach — of this.

And another minor event occurred since I wrote here last: I graduated from the Royal College of Music. Below are fellow composers Franco (Mexican), Camilo (Columbian), Huw (Australian), and some lousy American.

On the steps between the College and the Royal Albert Hall.

So now when people ask me why I'm in London, I can no longer say I'm studying. Now I'm just plain old unemployed.

This new prospect of a time limit, however, has lit a fire under us: we've been tearing around London making sure we see everything we want to before we no longer have the opportunity to stroll into one of the world's great museums for free.

One highlight was the Wallace Collection, a hidden gem of a place. One part stately old house, two parts museum, we especially liked the room full of paintings by Canaletto and this emerald green room. Expect our living area to look like this in the coming years!

And today we had a terrific day seeing two essentials: the Museum of London and the galleries of the British Library.

The latter holds everything from the earliest known sources of the New Testament to Beatles lyrics scrawled on the back of birthday cards in one relatively small space. It's worth a trip to London just to see the contents of that room. And the Museum of London details the story of the city from prehistory to the Great Fire of 1666 with astonishing depth and interest (the newly opened recent-history exhibits leave much to be desired — if you're visiting, plan to spend the bulk of your time on the first floor).

Despite all the history and tradition though, there's always something new, something happening. In Trafalgar Square, for instance, statues occupy three plinths in the square, but the fourth plinth changes every so often. At the moment, it's a gigantic ship in a bottle.

What a city, eh?

Waiting

2010-07-05T14:05:00.002-07:00

It's hard to know which Sondheim lyric to believe. In A Little Night Music, he tells us it's "bad for the heart." And yet, Mrs. Lovett persuades Sweeney Todd that "good things come to those who can... wait."

A pall of uncertainty about jobs (or the lack thereof) has been hanging over my head for uncomfortably long now. Do pardon my silence here, as I have had other fingernails to gnaw.

Life has trundled on, however. Teriann and I took a fantastic trip to Slovenia to celebrate our second anniversary (more on that soon, of course) and this weekend was an excellent Fourth of July weekend. We spent Saturday night with the flatmates (the usual shenanigans ensued, of course) and Sunday evening at the Abbey with Graeme and other assorted Americans (mostly clergy, but one gentleman who builds sets for West End musicals).

And I graduate on Friday, a milestone that does not seem nearly as significant as I would have guessed. My last one felt like an event, a rite of passage; this feels more like a ceremony.

I sincerely hope that I have better news to report when I write here again. This blog has somewhat unexpectedly turned into a litany of travel blurbs rather than what I intended: a place to air my esoteric and ponderous views about music, culture, and whatever else happens to pop in my mind. Recent topics that have been spared this prolonged scrutiny include the world-cup-vuvuzela-madness (I'm completely hooked — Teriann and I are talking about going to the 2014 Cup in Rio), my layman's theory of time (it's really just movement, whether it's light or gravity or walking), and the 1-year anniversary of Adam's trip to visit us (I miss you, bro... I'll never watch Wimbledon the same).

In the meantime, then, here's to looking ahead.

101 Hits the Road Part Two: Wales

2010-07-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

Months ago, everyone in our house was gathered around the TV (lazying around on a Sunday, no doubt) when a travel show had a program on about a new sport gaining popularity in Wales: coasteering. Unanimously, we decided we had to go try it, and we finally got it organized for the last weekend of May.

We stayed in the pretty little town of Betws-y-Coed,

which, despite the above photo (taken in the morning) is quite a bit livelier than other small, primarily tourist-oriented towns we've been through. The forest around the town makes it seem even smaller — it's essentially one main drag — but even out in the Welsh forest there was a minibus taxi available to take the 9 of us around for a night out in neighboring towns.

Unfortunately, we don't yet have the photos of coasteering itself. Digital cameras have made us completely helpless at converting our disposable, waterproof camera (which uses an ancient artifact known as film) into photographs viewable by the naked eye or indeed, the computer. So for the moment, suffice it to say that it was both terrifying and brilliant, and that I'll post pictures and such here when I get them.

We also visited a ruined castle (Wales is positively littered with them) and took a really enjoyable walk around a lake in the mountains behind town.

And, like our other May journey, it was made unforgettable by our incredible flatties. I've started to worry about missing these folks when we get back to the states.

Have a look at the facebook album here.

101 Hits The Road Part One: Stockholm

2010-06-02T13:47:00.003-07:00

In true Tom and Teriann fashion, we took a trip at the beginning of last month that we had neither the time nor the money for. In our defense, we planned it (and paid for it) last year, when we didn't think finding jobs would be an issue. And it wasn't even our idea: all our flatmates decided to do a trip for the bank holiday weekend. How could we resist?

First impression: what a beautiful city.

We enjoy the simple pleasures in traveling. Like climbing on lions (just like Trafalgar Square — only smaller),

and rummaging through copper-filled antique shops.

Sweden (and Scandinavia in general) is consistently ranked as having the world's top quality of life, so I suppose I had myself primed to see it through rose-colored glasses. And true, once we spent more time walking around more of the city I found that like any other city it has less-beautiful areas. But still, look at this church:

It's St. Jacob's, on the main square, now primarily used as a concert venue. They take their crests very seriously — check out the size and detail.

The main event of our first day was a visit to the Vasa, an old ship with an incredible story. Sunk an hour into its maiden voyage in 1628, the Vasa was raised from the bed of Stockholm harbor in 1961.

Because the water in the harbor is brackish (a mix of salt and fresh), it was impossibly well-preserved. The detail still on the ship after three centuries underwater beggars belief.

Strangely, it is an amazing sight both because of its age (incredible to think that people built such magnificent ships so long ago) and because of the very modern engineering feat it represents. There was a model of this incredible process that happened nearly 50 years ago.

The museum was filled with models, actually, including an enormous model of the Vasa as it would have appeared fully rigged for its maiden voyage that was an impressive work of art in its own right. Another of my favorites was this model of life aboard the ship (the sailors fighting in the upper right corner are chuckle-worthy at minimum).

They could have just raised an old ship out of the ocean and I would have been impressed, but the supplementing exhibits were really well done. There was stuff about life on the sea in 1628, stuff about the various items (and, unfortunately, people) found on board in 1961, and stuff about the mind-boggling process of displaying and looking after such a cumbersome and unprecedented piece of history. A one-of-a-kind experience, to be sure; I couldn't recommend it highly enough.

Also planned for the weekend was an overnight cruise. On this:

I had never been on a cruise before, so I was stoked! I felt like a little kid on board. The buffet dinner was hands-down the best buffet I've ever had (which I suppose isn't that much of an accomplishment, but still: there was caviar and ostrich) and we spent the night having a good old singalong with the guitar player in the on-board pub.

The best thing about the boat, though, was the view. As it took us out of the city (and practically halfway to Finland), the homes on the banks became fewer and further in between.

And after dinner, there was only wilderness.

What is most important (and most difficult) to convey here is that what really made the weekend come alive was our flatmates. Our big group made even the mundane parts of the trip fun. Pictures are far more effective than my writing can be to that end: have a look at the facebook album.

All in all, a magical weekend.

Wrapping Up

2010-06-02T13:47:00.001-07:00

Graduate school is essentially finished. The graduation ceremony isn't until July, but I turned in the last of my work last Thursday night and am already enjoying writing music without disdainful academia looking over my shoulder.

But the future is far from clear: I always thought that coming home would be a dose of certainty and stability, but at the moment, the job issue is making it almost as daunting as London was two years ago. When will I be able to start teaching? Will I be able to get a job at the Bang right away? Will I make time to do all the things I want to and be able to avoid an artistic rut?

I'm full of heavy questions at the moment. Perhaps the one I should most be concerned with is: when am I coming home?

The In-Laws Week Three: Bonus Time in London

2010-05-31T02:45:00.004-07:00

The week of April 19 was a crazy one. Louie and Suzanne were stuck with us for another week due to volcanic ash (I think we were happier about them staying than they were!), but I was really busy: school was back in session. So while they took a second look around in the British Museum and other places, I was writing or in rehearsal. Still, I managed to come along to a few things here and there.

On Thursday we went on a London walk of the City. In case I haven't explained this before, most of what people consider to be London is actually Westminster, just west of the 'proper' capital City of London. The City, as it's called, is now London's financial district, which means Teriann and I are relatively unfamiliar with it, but it's also the oldest and most historic part of London, which makes it an interesting walk.

Leadenhall Market was very nice,

and Londoners first got hooked on coffee in a little alley nearby.

In 1652, there weren't numbered addresses as we think of them today, but signs or pictures above each shop that would identify them to people who couldn't read. You see what I mean, though: history is thick on the ground.

The Guildhall is an old (and surprisingly German-styled) building now sandwiched in between modern glass insurance buildings. It is itself built near the site of the old Roman amphitheatre, whose outline is now the public square in front of it.

We'll be going back soon to see the exhibition about the amphitheatre — we didn't have time on the day, though.

During their first week in London, we had gone to Windsor Castle, home of Her Majesty Queen Superfluous, but because she was holding a superfluous State posh dinner, it was all closed up except for Queen Mary's doll house. Fascinating though the doll house was (check out those model cars!),

it wasn't really what we had come to see, so we went back for another visit during our extra week. The castle turned out to be worth the extra trip: fantastic and overwhelming (and a head-scratching use of public funds for a nation so profoundly in debt). We couldn't take our own photos inside, but the grounds were spectacular.

This just happened to be on St. George's Day, England's national day, so there was much patriotic singing and merriment at the local pub.

Okay, I guess there's not singing in the picture, but trust me... there was merriment! Just beyond those windows, there was a crowd of old Brits proudly singing/shouting "Ruuuuuuule Britannia! Britaaaaannia ruuuuuules the waaaaaaves!"

The next night, Teriann and Suzanne went to see Billy Elliot, but Louie and I went for something a little more gentlemanly: snooker.

Neither one of us had ever played snooker, but we were both basically hooked because the World Championships were on TV throughout April. So basically every night, we were watching snooker matches, and we were keen to have a go.

Look at the size of the table! I'm in the picture below... somewhere.

I lost, of course. Louie is a pool shark after all.

On their last night, the Suns were playing early enough in Phoenix for us to watch it in London. The only trouble was that only one place in town was showing it: the renowned American expat hangout, The Sports Cafe. Turns out Americans really do have bad taste: it's the worst bar I've ever been in: smelly, loud, rather-be-elsewhere staff — all that and more. Or less? Oh well... couldn't dampen our spirits — we had a great trip.

The In-Laws Week Two: Liverpool to Stonehenge

2010-05-31T01:44:00.000-07:00

I'm way behind the times... so much to update, and I've been so busy finishing up school stuff! That's finished now (woohoo!) so let's pick up where we left off a few weeks ago. Mind you, this was all in the middle of April.

After a few days in the Lakes, we headed towards the Cotswolds, stopping quickly on the way to pop into Liverpool and the Beatles Story. Is there any musician or group that is as universally loved as the Beatles? I think not.

Our home base was the quaint little village of Chipping Campden.

On our first night, weary from a long day's travel, we happened across what we think is the best pub in town: the Noel Arms. The food (and ale) there was outstanding... some of the best pub food we've ever had. Perfect pub atmosphere too: two parts refined, two parts comfortable, three parts good food and ale, one part laid-back with a liberal sprinkling of grubby.

Our first stop in the region was Stratford upon Avon, one-time home to the Bard himself, Billy Shakespeare. He's buried in the church on the right.

We went to Mary Arden's House (his grandmother's house) just outside town. It was fun, but not necessarily because it had anything to do with Shakespeare. It was fun mostly because it had cows

and Teriann-sized doors.

The bulk of the Shakespeare stuff was in the house in Stratford where he was born. Known as 'the birthplace' ever since he was a famous playwright in London, visitors have come here over the centuries to pay their respects. In its modern incarnation, it has a copy of the First Folio as well as exhibits about how his writings have infiltrated and influenced every corner of Western culture.

We also visited Hall's Croft, home of his daughter (since she married a doctor, most of the exhibits were about medicine in the 17th century) and saw a play that evening (Royal Shakespeare Company performing Antony and Cleopatra).

We spent our second day having a walk out in the countryside. Starting at the Town Hall,

we bought rock cakes from the tiny market inside (mmmmmm) and set off to explore the neighboring village of Broad Campden and... whatever else there was to explore.

That turned out to be sheep,

cottages,

fields,

and general quaint-ness.

Broad Campden isn't so much a village as it is a cluster of cottages around one of the most charming pubs I've ever seen: the Bakers Arms.

Of course we had to stop for a pint. How else does one walk in the English countryside?

For our final day in the country before returning to London, we started with a visit to Longleat Safari Park, a kind of drive-through zoo. You'd think Americans would have invented a drive-through zoo, right? Well not so fast. It was bizarre to see African wildlife roaming across the rolling countryside of England. It seemed less like a zoo and more like the animals just happened to live in Wiltshire.

This tiger was REALLY CLOSE to our car!

Lunch was a really great picnic on the lawn outside Longleat House. It was simple — bread, cheese and a little wine — but it was one of the best lunches we had.

The main event of the day, however, was a visit to Stonehenge. Here's a good candidate for best pic of the day:

but my money's on this one, Audioguide Henge with Pigs.

As Louie said of the monument: "Stonehenge: That's some crazy shit." Indeed it is, Louie. Indeed it is.

We headed down to Salisbury (it's only just down the road) to have a quick look at the cathedral, but the town was pretty much closing up by that point. Ahh... one last view of idyllic Salisbury...

...before heading back to concrete London.

The In-Laws Week Two: Yorkshire and the Lake District

2010-05-10T13:10:00.000-07:00

We get out to Europe whenever we can, but Teriann and I had yet to explore our own backyard. Sure, we had been to Brighton, Cambridge, and Bath, but there's so much more to see on this little island, and we hadn't gotten to it yet. Louie and Suzanne wanted to see some English countryside, and we couldn't have agreed more. Our plan was to start in Yorkshire to visit their friends Kitty and Richard, then head over to the Lake District and come back through the Cotswolds.

On our way up, we stopped in York briefly to visit the Minster. York Minster is roughly the same size (massive) and age (ancient) as most other major cathedrals in Europe. What makes it stand out, however, is the amount of work that has been done on it just within the past few decades.

To get there, we walked along the fun (and somewhat precarious) city wall. "Look Ma, no railing!"

From the front, it looks pretty standard,

but then we walked around it to get a sense of its size — and came across these.

I haven't seen anything like that since Gaudi's unfinished cathedral in Barcelona. And it carries on inside. When you step in, look up and you see this:

Brand new. The guide told us that when the original medallions were blackened by a massive fire in 1984, rather than try to restore them, the artists simply designed and made new ones. There have been several fires and other incidents (at one point a bell fell from the tower) and in the 1960s a major engineering effort had to be made just to keep the poor thing standing. All of this makes for an interesting story, but what was really fascinating was in the basement.

During the engineering works of the 1960s, they dug out most of the cathedral's foundations, letting archaeologists find what had stood on that spot before. Their findings are very well displayed in what would otherwise be a crypt. It shows how a Roman-era building on the site fell into ruin and was replaced by a Norman-era church, which itself was replaced by the current, even larger Gothic building. It's more interesting then I'm making it sound.

York itself turned out to be a pleasant little town. It's the sort of place I could live: big enough to get what I need or go to the movies, but small enough to feel like a town. One of my favorite things was this building:

Probably from the 16th century or so, it now is used to sell cell phones. Oh how I wish I could try to explain to the people who built this building what would be sold from it centuries in the future.

But it was getting late — time to finish the drive up to Kitty and Richard's.

Louie and Suzanne met Kitty on a rafting trip some years ago, and when she married Richard (the week after Teriann and I got married, incidentally), he turned out to fit their adventurous group perfectly. They are fantastic people — hospitable, generous, and kind, yes, but also funny, interesting and well-traveled. They live in Yorkshire, near Pickering, and we started our week in the countryside with a weekend at their home.

What a home it is:

This was the view from our guest bedroom:

The four of us were so well looked after: Kitty is an outstanding cook and between her cooking and Richard constantly topping up our wine glasses, we must have gained a few pounds in those two days!

On Saturday, we went to Levisham train station to watch the steam trains go through,

then walked up the moors to see Skelton Tower. Well, we just set out to have a walk, really, and happened to come across it.

The scandal goes that Skelton Tower is where, as a local at the train station informed us, "the Reverend used to take his bit of nookie."

From there, we could see the train coming back through the valley.

I don't know if the photos do that landscape justice: it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been; all the more beautiful because of its strangeness. The moors aren't exactly pleasant, frolicking grounds. Especially in April, they are scratchy, harsh, and barren. With the vista and the forests in the background, though, it was stunning.

Sunday was spent at Go Ape, a kind of rope adventure course through the trees of Dalby Forest, betting on the Grand National (an English pastime), and of course, more wine.

It was reluctantly that we set out on Monday morning. We were headed for the Lakes, but our route took us by Whitby, a pleasant little coastal town where, in Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula arrives in England. We had a stroll on the beach and had the best fish and chips I've ever had anywhere.

Donkeys on the beach?

Our drive took us through the dreary and grim industrial North (Middlesbrough has to be the poster child for such things — it's even worse than Birmingham), but ended up in a spectacular place: the Newlands Valley just outside Keswick. I never thought I'd see scenery this dramatic in England.

That first evening, we took my favorite walk of our trip, around Lake Buttermere,

and ate a fantastic pub dinner in the Bridge, one (the better one, if you ask me) of Buttermere's two pubs. I can't recommend the walk around Lake Buttermere highly enough: completely level and non-stop views.

The whole area, really, was scenery overload. Our B & B looked out over this:

It was a working farm, so there were plenty of sheep around. There were loads of sheep everywhere, in fact, and it was the height of lambing season. Our hike the next morning took us up a mountain and around a waterfall... none of which was too steep for our woolly companions.

Our afternoon was spent in the neighboring town of Cockermouth, where we took the Jennings Brewery Tour. Teriann and I have been on a few such tours (Guinness and Jameson) but this was our favorite. It's a real working brewery, not a tourist show. We tasted the different flavors of malt grains. We smelled hops. And we happened to be on the very first tour since the floods that devastated the town last November. Had we come in the day before, we would have been turned away.

When we got back to Keswick, we figured we had a couple of hours before dinner, and that we should go on a short walk. So we went to Castlerigg, a stone circle a mile or so from town (Stonehenge is the most famous and elaborate stone circle, but there are thousands of others in Britain). It was okay — not great — so we planned to take a different route back to town, a route that would bring us along the edge of Derwent Water, one of the largest lakes in the region.

This didn't work out so well.

To cut a very long story (that is, hike) short, by the time we made it to the lake's edge, we had taken more than a few wrong turns, we were hungry, and twilight was falling.

It made for beautiful photos — we barely got into town by dark — but it was exhausting.

This is getting pretty lengthy, so my next post will pick up the following morning as we headed towards Liverpool and the Cotswolds.

The In-Laws Week One: London

2010-05-06T00:09:00.000-07:00

We had planned it since Christmas, and thankfully it came along quite soon: Louie and Suzanne came to visit with their friend Florence at the beginning of April. We spent the first week of their visit in London, and the first few days with their British friends Kitty and Richard, who they met on a rafting trip some years ago. They live in Yorkshire (more on that in the next post) but keep a flat in London to visit every now and then.

The first night we played it easy (their flight in had been delayed by several hours), met Kitty and Richard at their flat in Farringdon (just north of St. Paul's), and made our way down to Gabriel's Wharf on the Thames for dinner.

On our way, it turned out that London was putting on its best face for its new visitors. As we approached St. Paul's Cathedral, we noticed a strange white fluff in the air. Nearer, we could tell they were feathers. Why would there be feathers floating around? We saw the answer in due course: a massive pillow fight had just been waged on the steps in front of the cathedral. We've heard of this before: every year, London holds a free-for-all pillow fight somewhere in the city — a kind of youthful flashmob.

There were also dozens of people dressed up as cats (why? I have no idea) and plenty of street performers around the Millennium Bridge. Such a city is never boring.

The next day was Easter Sunday, which we started off by playing on the lions in Trafalgar Square

and visiting the National Gallery.

I'm sure I've written about this here before, but the National Gallery has to be one of my favorite things in the city. I've probably been about a half-dozen times or more, but it never gets boring: every time there's something new to see or an old favorite to revisit. Truly a wonderful place.

From there, we made our may to St. Paul's Cathedral for the Easter service, stopping along the way in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a literary pub on Fleet Street that was the favorite haunt of Dickens, Conan Doyle, and, on his visits to London, Mark Twain.

We started off Monday with a walk through Harrods (well, parts of it anyway) and on our way up to the British Museum, we stopped off in Hyde Park for a photoshoot with the daffodils.

Spring has been late this year (as I write, full-fledged summer still seems weeks away), but for the beginning of April, it did manage to look spring-y enough.

The following day, we went to Windsor Castle (more about that in a future post) and Kew Gardens. It was a wintry day — cold, windy, and a low white sky — but Kew was fantastic as always.

Plus the weather didn't matter inside the greenhouses.

We also visited the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Westminster Abbey, Borough Market, and the Tate Modern. All wonderful times in a wonderful city with wonderful people. I love it when people come to visit as it gives us an excuse to get out and do more touristy things.

So on Friday morning we said farewell to Florence, picked up our rental car, and headed north.

There are many more pics of our week in London — and our trip through the rest of England — in the facebook album.

Pain in the Ash

2010-04-20T14:14:00.003-07:00

What do you expect? I read British newspapers for a year and a half and I can't resist a bad pun in a headline.

The past three weeks have been very full; and the ensuing weeks are so full that I don't have the time to catch you up just yet. In fact, I may not get much time for reflection at all until school ends at the end of May.

Until then, a brief account:

I was fortunate enough to be asked to write a piece for this year's Sounds New Festival in Canterbury. Because of the short notice (and not, for once, procrastination), I spent the week before Easter staying up into the wee hours of the morning to get it finished in time. The Icarus Vocal Ensemble will premiere it on May 14 and perform it again on their concert in Birmingham on June 15.
Teriann's parents arrived for their visit the day before Easter. We spent a week in London and a further week ambling around the English countryside. Many, many pictures are to come — as soon as I can. It was fortunate that we decided to see England and not somewhere on the Continent because
An extremely annoying volcano in Iceland has necessitated the complete closure of UK airspace for nearly a week (hence the title's pun). Louie and Suzanne planned on flying home yesterday, but aren't re-scheduled to fly home until Sunday. For us, it's lucky: we get to hang out with them for an extra week, and they don't have to pay for a hotel. For thousands of stranded others, it's probably not such a good time.

Climbing Big Ben

2010-03-26T11:55:00.005-07:00

Like the Eiffel Tower to Paris or the Statue of Liberty to New York, Big Ben is the most recognized symbol of London. Nothing else gives me quite the same 'Ahhh, I'm in London' feeling as to see it from Trafalgar Square, or over the river at night. Standing beneath it, in Parliament Square, I'm in the very center of London, its government, its history.

I've felt this ever since we first moved here; this is one of my favorite photos I've ever taken, and it's from our second day in the city.

I happen to be going on about this now, though, because this morning Teriann and I took a tour of the clock tower. We climbed all the way up to the inside of the clock faces and then up to the belfry, where at 10 a.m. sharp, Big Ben himself (the English are always keen to point out that, technically, 'Big Ben' only refers to the massive bell that tolls the hours — not the tower itself) rang out ten times while we stood about ten feet away.

The tour itself was absolutely incredible. The views from the Belfry were outstanding. Standing behind the faces of the world's most iconic clock was just as wonderful as I had imagined. And it was all made just that little bit better by the fact that this is one of the little benefits that comes with living here. You see, no tourists are allowed — one has to live in Britain to take the tour, and tickets are obtained through your Member of Parliament. The one downside, though, is that we weren't allowed to take pictures. Sorry — I'll have to stick with the stock photos from Parliament's website.

The tour started with the massive climb (we've done far worse — it wasn't too narrow) to the clock faces.

From there, it was up to the belfry. The guide gave out earplugs, and I had mine at the ready just in case, but I figured, how many times in my life will I hear the Westminster chimes from inside the clock tower? So I braved it, and what a sound. It was so loud, and I was so close, that I actually felt the initial strikes. It's been so rare that I've ever had that sensation that I don't really know what to compare it to. When you turn up the bass on a powerful stereo, sometimes you can feel it in your chest; but the bell was that loud across a wide and complex range of frequencies. It was exhilarating. Teriann and I were in the bell tower of St. Mark's in Venice when that started pealing, but this was much more intense.

We took one more look around at the view and headed down to the clock room. I knew that the clock was about 150 years old, but somewhere in the back of my head I'd always assumed that somewhere in the past century and a half, it had been updated to a modern system. Wrong. It's the same clock mechanism today that started ticking in 1859. And it's accurate to within a half a second.

It's kept that accurate by a team of clockmakers — one of whom was on hand to tell us that the first toll of our unforgettable 10:00 a.m. had been a quarter of a second late — who still look after it in much the same way they would have in Victorian times. They replace springs and tighten bolts; the clock mechanism itself, which is driven by a massive weight hanging through the length of the hollow tower, must still be wound by hand. If they didn't tend to this regularly, the weight would reach the ground in about three days and the clock would stop.

This website is pretty good... there's a video about the clock tower, more pictures of the inside, etc.

All in all, an unforgettable morning in the midst of a week otherwise crowded with work, work, and work.

Before I sign off, here are a few more of our favorite pics of Big Ben taken over the last year and a half.

Istanbul

2010-03-18T14:43:00.000-07:00

Another weekend, another destination that we didn't want to leave, another... continent.

Istanbul is an incredible place. It has truly amazing sights and attractions, but it's also the kind of city that can catch you off guard: if you happen to look up from your path, the city tumbles down to deep, vibrant blue water on all sides; the skyline is softened by the arcs of domes and punctuated by proud minarets; seagulls swirl in flocks in the graying sky; beyond the water, hills roll away, more minarets, more domes... And I'm swept away.

Up close, too, it's a rich, rewarding place. The food and desserts are wonderful, the people are some of the nicest we've ever come across... and on and on. Enough. What did we actually do?

We arrived in the afternoon and set out from our hotel to do a bit of exploring, starting with the Grand Bazaar. If ever there was an idea taken to its absurd extreme, surely it's the concept of a market transformed into the Grand Bazaar. A photo would be useless — what amazes is how long one walks down passages crowded with stalls (largely selling the same things as their neighbors), all the while crossing further passages that extend to the right and left as far as one can see. It's a labyrinth. It makes suburban mega-malls of America look unambitious and hopelessly plain.

Many of the shops/stalls have barkers, but they're (mostly) not the aggressive, annoying kind. We struck up a conversation with one and, even though we had no intention of buying a Turkish carpet, let him show us some silk carpets that change color depending on the angle from which you look. There was also the most incredible assortment of colored-glass lamps and chandeliers I've ever seen. Here's one of our favorites.

The Bazaar is a bit of a sensory overload, so we basically walked straight through (which, mind you, takes plenty of time even in a straight line) up to the city's main harbor. The river that runs through the city is called the Bosphorus, and it is the dividing line between Europe on its west bank and Asia on its east. It branches off on the European side, so the city is divided into thirds, and the old town where we spent most of our time is surrounded on three sides by water.

From there, we took a ferry on an evening cruise of the river.

See what I mean about getting swept away?

Even the modern suspension bridge that links the European side to the Asian side is lit up in a kind of twinkling, glittering effect.

And when we got back to our hotel, the view from our hotel room was incredible.

In fact, the view from the breakfast terrace the next morning was something to see as well.

The building in the foreground (and in the night picture above) is the Blue Mosque, and in the background is the Aya Sophia. And if you drew a line through them, then continued the line into the distance, you'd get to our first stop the next morning: Topkapi Palace.

The sultans of the Ottoman Empire called Topkapi Palace home for centuries; like all such palaces around Europe, it's no longer in use — in favor of drab government buildings — and is instead a tourist attraction. It has the usual palace stuff (ornate banquet halls, crown jewels, etc.) but my favorite part was the complex in the corner furthest from the entrance. It also happens to be the corner of the peninsula, so the views are incredible.

You can see across to the military barracks on the Asian side of the city where Florence Nightingale practically invented nursing during the Crimean War.

There's a small museum there, but it wasn't open during our time in the city.

Teriann's favorite thing about the palace, however, was its band of feral cats. Cats and dogs roam the city, but they're all friendly and, for the most part, oddly clean. The encounter below, Teriann told me, was pretty much the highlight of her trip. Strange lady.

From there, we headed to my favorite thing we saw all weekend, the Aya Sophia.

It was completed in 537 — a thousand years before the great buildings of the Renaissance — when Istanbul was the Roman city of Constantinople. Built as a church, it was converted into a mosque and finally into a museum, somehow managing to stand through the centuries and regimes.

Let me explain something about Roman buildings. In Rome, you can see many ancient buildings, like the Coliseum, which is enormous but very much a ruin, or the Pantheon, which is incredibly well-preserved and beautiful but only the size of an average church. But the Aya Sophia is all three: ancient, preserved, and breathtakingly massive.

And right across the park is the Blue Mosque. To be honest, I was slightly ashamed that I had never been in any other religious building other than a church. Why should that be the case, especially since I'm not religious?

The building itself was spectacular, but it made me feel a lot like visiting the Vatican: at the same time that I was impressed by the structure, I was very aware of how deeply I disagree with some of the tenets of the religion.

More than anything, though, it made me interested in visiting other houses of worship, Hindu temples, synagogues, etc., in the future.

We ended that night with a whirling dervish show — which was pretty average. The ceremony was slow and reverent, but I, uninformed, was expecting something with a bit more energy.

Our last morning in the city was spent poking through a few shops on our way to another Roman-era attraction, the cistern. Essentially a giant holding tank to provide the city with water, it was built by the same Emperor who built the Aya Sophia. We had a limited amount of time before our flight back to London, so it seemed like the best option.

On our way, however, a local struck up a conversation with us. He guessed that we were Americans (in London they're more polite about it and guess Canadian... hehe) and told us that his son recently got married and lives in Queens, New York. We smiled, told him congratulations, etc... It's not uncommon to find yourself in small conversations with strangers. As I said before, the people are genuinely very kind. We asked where exactly we could find the cistern, and he changed his own direction: "Follow me."

He was still chatting up a storm: his son this, his wife that. "Come into my shop," he urges, "have a look around." Before we know it, we're not at the cistern but in his carpet shop, and he's showing us his old family pictures. I'm not kidding — he had a full-on black-and-white photo of a family, in which he pointed out which young boy was himself. Riiiiight.

Now all this is probably a little sleazy, but when we kindly explained that we weren't in the market for a rug, he just apologized and took us to the road where we could find the cistern. He wasn't rude or anything. In fact, he was so jovial the whole time that it didn't even feel sleazy — it just seemed like kind of a funny thing to have happened on our morning walk.

The cistern itself — we were still smiling when we got there — was quite interesting. There's a handful of these things to see around Europe, but most aren't nearly as old. This one is from the 6th century, and re-uses some Greek columns — which would have been about 800 years old at the time of its construction.

Before we reluctantly made our way to the airport, we spent a couple of last minutes in the park between the Sophia and the Blue Mosque. It was a beautiful morning. We had seen some amazing highlights but hadn't had the time to dig deeper into the city.

More than anything, though, it was simply relaxing. Sitting in a park is always a good way to spend time; doing nothing is never as rewarding anywhere else.

Concerts Concerts Concerts

2010-03-08T12:31:00.000-07:00

I have been busy busy busy! No, I won't continue to repeat everything three times (times times), but I've had a few interesting concert experiences over the last few weeks.

February 25 - Prokofiev's The Gambler at the Royal Opera House. The Gambler was Prokofiev's first opera, and it's generally regarded (with good reason, methinks) as his worst. Still, it was given an immaculate performance at one of the world's great stages, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. Despite my comically distant standing place (from my vantage point, I could simultaneously lean on the back wall and touch the ceiling) and my headache, I liked it more than I had anticipated. In a strange way, the faults of the piece were more inspiration than the high points; I couldn't stop thinking of how I would have done it differently.

March 2 - Vienna Philharmonic with Lorin Maazel. This concert was old school to the max. With extra starch. I counted three women in the whole orchestra. As it was only four days before Maazel's 80th birthday, I consider myself fortunate to have seen him conduct; he is one of the most famous and recorded conductors of the 20th century, and he didn't use a score for any of the music. All that being said, the music itself was quite disappointing. Maazel was at turns showy and tasteless. And the orchestra played like they were completely nonplussed by him. For me, the highlight of the evening was probably when they tuned: they actually tune to the concertmaster, rather than the principal oboe, a practice I would advocate had I an orchestra to which I could advocate.

March 5 - Ensemble 10/10 at Wigmore Hall. Ensemble 10/10 is Liverpool's contemporary music group, but they come to London every now and then to give a concert. This one was quite good — varied and with solid, committed playing throughout. I especially liked Ian Gardiner's piece, a sort of bass clarinet concertante. And the primary reason I was there was to hear my teacher's piece, Music of a Distant Drum, which closed the program. After six other pieces, I was pleased to hear how well its craft stood up even to tired ears.

March 7 - London Symphony with John Adams. I expected the best orchestra I would hear this week would be the Vienna Philharmonic, but the hometown LSO blew them out of the water — and with an American at the helm to boot. There may have been empty seats dotted here and there, but the applause was far more robust (and genuine) than it had been a few nights before. I'm very much looking forward to Thursday night, when he premieres his new piece, City Noir.

And it doesn't let up just yet:

March 11 - A second concert of the LSO conducted by John Adams

March 12 - Dawn Upshaw with Emanuel Ax

And then off the Turkey. All this traveling over the past few years, but Asia will still be only the third continent I've been to.

Debt

2010-03-08T10:18:00.001-07:00

There's a monster waiting for me when I come home this summer. A mountain; an impossibly large number.

But nothing cheers me up quite so much as when I reluctantly tell someone the actual dollar amount and they say: "That's almost a house!" Immediately, my mood lightens. I think to myself: Thanks for putting it into perspective. I could have either

An education that will allow me to pursue a career I wouldn't have otherwise been able to
Two years full of incredible travels and memories
An understanding of another culture
Friends literally all over the globe

A mortgage

Lisbon

2010-02-18T14:58:00.002-07:00

From the moment we left Lisbon on Sunday, I've had a strong and slightly irrational urge to go back. As cliché as it sounds, the place is intoxicating. Over the course of two and a half days, we saw so many widely different things, ate so much good food, experienced such an ideal cultural balance between different and comfortable, that it was without question one of the best trips we've taken yet.

We started out on Friday afternoon going to the newest part of town, Parque das Nações (which actually means 'Park of the Nations', but since I didn't know how to pronounce it, I dubbed it 'Park of the Nachos'), which was built for the 1998 World's Fair. The main attraction there is the Oceanarium, one of the largest aquariums in Europe.

I can't definitively say that this was the best aquarium I've ever been to, but it's certainly a very good one. Among the highlights were sea dragons and an enormous sun fish.

It's difficult to get a sense of scale from the photo, but the thing was massive — probably about 6 feet in diameter.

There were penguins, puffins, and otters in addition to the usual aquarium fare, and the huge main tank was stocked with so many different kinds of sharks, rays, and unusual fish that it never got boring. Half way around the tank, I was still finding new and strange animals to watch.

Also in this 'Nacho Park' was a shopping center with a large grocery store. Up to this point, Lisbon had been fairly standard: airport, metro, aquarium, typical tourist fare. But the grocery store really made us feel like we were traveling. The Portugese don't refrigerate their milk, for one thing (which made it really difficult to find since we were looking in the cold aisles), and they sell fish that has been prepared in a way I've never seen — I'm guessing dried and salted.

How one's supposed to cook that, I have no idea.

We were looking for groceries (milk and the like) because rather than staying in a typical hotel, we rented a holiday apartment, which turned out to be a good decision. In addition to having more space than a box hotel room, it was really nicely decorated.

Being the HGTV fiend that she is, Teriann really liked this.

The next day, we set off to Sintra, a small town about a half hour's train ride outside the city. Sintra has long been the place where kings and nobility have built their summer residences. As a result, the forested hills are dotted with castles and elaborate palaces. We visited two of the best.

The first was the ruins of an old Moorish castle. Usually, 'old' for a castle means 500 years or so. This castle, however, was in use by the 9th century, making the ruins about 1,200 years old.

The whole place is really atmospheric — even in February the forest is dense and fresh moss and lichen clings to the gray stone.

Feral cats roam the ruins, and, true to form, Teriann couldn't resist grabbing a stick and trying to get one to play with her.

And from the top, you can make out the next castle we visited: Pena Palace.

It's difficult for me to write about Pena Palace. For one thing, I'm slightly ashamed that I had never heard of it until we got a Lisbon guide book. For another, it comes dangerously close to upstaging one of our favorite European landmarks: Neuschwanstein.

Around 1845, Portugal's King Fernando II (who was actually Austrian) decided to add to a 16th century monastery (the red parts) and turn it into a royal palace (the yellow parts). The result is a magnificent, whimsical castle, built roughly 40 years before Neuschwanstein, and what it lacks in sheer opulence it makes up for in creativity and playfulness.

It's a play-castle, a kind of out-sized toy. The turrets aren't defensive look-outs but places to enjoy the view. You can walk across the top of the drawbridge gate. There's a breathtaking wall walk. Every style from the centuries is borrowed and not quite amalgamated. Eastern-themed motifs (the yellow minaret, for instance) sit right alongside architectural details taken from other buildings (the watchtowers, for instance, are from the icon-of-Portugal Torre de Belém).

It's stunning. While I can't say that it's better than Neuschwanstein, Pena Palace is certainly as good as it. It pushes the same limits of imagination and suggests a similarly inspired and out-of-touch creator.

But after two castles — both fantastic in their own ways — the day wasn't quite over yet. After a full day in Portugal, we still hadn't roamed through much of Lisbon's city center, so that's where we headed. Unsurprisingly, it was lovely.

We finished our banner day with a banner meal: the lady renting us her apartment had recommended 'La Bota Alta', so we decided to give it a try. It's quite unassuming, inside and out,

so we may not have otherwise chosen it, but her recommendation was spot on. We got there early enough to get a table straightaway, but halfway through our meal (swordfish and rice... mmmm) there was a line out the door, many of them locals. The food and service were excellent — if you come through Lisbon, don't miss it!

So we had spent time in a gleaming new development, centuries-old castles in the wooded hills, and a beautiful, old-world European capital. And we still had one more day!

We started it with something we had been waiting for for several months: a GoCar tour.

These funky yellow three-wheelers guide you through a predetermined tour route with a navigation system that also tells you a little about the sights. Only this is obviously geared towards tourists, taking you through the picturesque, interesting parts of the city. We saw them — but didn't have time to get one — when we were in Barcelona, and this was our first chance to rent one since.

I anticipated having a peaceful, carefree dawdle around town. In actuality, it was very different than I anticipated. The main thing that struck me is how INCREDIBLY LOUD it is. Unless you're idling at a red light, the engine screams in your ear constantly. And the roads of Lisbon aren't so much paved as they are sort of flattened out — sort of. So if there's a car behind you and you're compelled to travel at flow-of-traffic speeds, it bounces around with a cartoonish fervor that is hilarious the first few times and annoying thereafter.

And there was the little issue of one of the brakes failing. The brakes are bicycle-style on the handlebars, and the left one on ours completely gave out after about twenty minutes. Not confidence-inspiring on the hills.

And speaking of hills, there was one the little screaming engine simply could not scream its way up. We had to coast back down and get a more vigorous running start to crest it.

And speaking of going backwards, there's no reverse gear. So if I misjudged a corner, co-pilot Teriann had to get out and push.

Still, it was good for a laugh, and it definitely felt like an adventure. I should also point out that the staff was both very helpful and genuinely kind.

A little rattled and with our hearing not yet back to normal, we set off for the final stop of our weekend: Belém. It's a part of town on the coast — just west of the city center — with a number of things to do and see: the iconic Torre de Belém (where Portugese navigators set off in the glory days of Portugal's empire), the modern Monument to Discoveries, and a medieval, elaborately-carved monastery.

We took a few pictures on the giant map in front of the Monument to Discoveries,

but it was too cold and windy to make the walk down to the Torre. So instead, we ducked inside the Monasterio Jeronimos. Can't go through a major capital without taking in at least one big, old church!

Before our journey to the airport, however, we stopped for one last dinner a block or two away from the monastery. By now, good food was almost seeming routine to us. What made this particular place all the more memorable was the head waiter. Presumably also the owner, he was high-energy and immediately our best friend — imagine if Steve Irwin had been born in Portugal.

He made a few recommendations, but when he came back to take our order, it turned out I didn't have a choice anyway: "I have surprise for you! A very special surprise! Cod fish... that's all I'll tell you. Surprise. Very, very good. Not on the menu — made it special for someone but made too much. Very good! Surprise! If you don't like it, I'll buy both your meals." And on and on. Every time he passes, he winks: "Surprise! For you!" We sit eating our bread and cheese — he's barely able to contain his excitement, flashing the thumbs up. We sit sipping our Coke — he silently mouths from the other side of the restaurant: "Surprise!"

It was indeed tasty, but not nearly as fun as his anticipation. When we left he smiled ear-to-ear, extending his hand for a good, firm shake. But not sickly so — he was just genuinely thrilled that so many people had come to eat at his restaurant.

And we will again when we go back. What a city — what a weekend.

Bilbao

2010-02-09T04:48:00.012-07:00

Winter is a cold and dreary time in London. This weekend, for instance, it was only slightly above freezing. So for our first trip of the new year, we headed south — to Bilbao, Spain.

The main draw was Frank Gehry's incredible Guggenheim Museum. We were both a little worried, though, that it might be the only thing to do and we'd end up bored. As it turns out, though, Bilbao is a lovely city: public gardens, a charismatic old town, and a strand of funky style. It's in northeast Spain — heart of the Basque region.

The first night, we had tapas on the Plaza Nueva,

and strolled down the river to see the Guggenheim at night. Disappointingly, it wasn't well-lit (probably due to a light-up art installation near by), but the Calatrava bridge looked great.

Dinner was a small hitch: we couldn't really find anything that wasn't either a bar or a cafe, so we gambled on a place that looked nice, Cafe Iruña.

The waiter didn't speak any English (very few people did) and clearly we had no idea what we were doing, because what we ordered turned out to be sliced meat on a plate. That's all: just meat on a plate. So it wasn't a culinary coup, but an enjoyable night nonetheless. We got a bottle of local wine and experimented making our own kalimotxo, a Basque drink that's basically half red wine and half coke. It doesn't taste as strange as it sounds.

Sunday, we got up nice and late (it's vacation after all) and mosied over to one of the most famous buildings of modernity: the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum. Opened in 1997 and designed by "starchitect" Frank Gehry, it eludes explanation. To me, it's nothing short of inspiring.

I should also explain that, as a kid, when I wanted to be an architect, this building was a huge deal. I read about it when it was still only a design, still being constructed. For more than a decade, I've seen pictures and wanted to see it for myself. So forgive me if I post one or two too many of my own pictures here... I just think it's stunning.

Inside, there's a massive ground floor gallery. It's a huge space uncluttered by columns or supports. Though why it was filled with a collection of rusty metal shapes, I have no idea. Why not use it for a work that is dependent on the huge scale?

Perspective can be deceiving: if you look near the top in the center, you can see two people. That should help to give you some scale of the size of the gallery.

We did like, however, the giant spider on the riverfront,

and these industrial-strength tulips by Jeff Koons (you can see both in the wide shots above).

He has a few pieces in the Phoenix Art Museum, if I remember correctly, and is, if you believe this plaque, from Nueva York.

I'm confident to say that this is my favorite modern art museum I've been to. Partly because the building is, in itself, a work of art, and partly because there wasn't really that much modern art in it. One reason we went when we did was for the traveling exhibition that took up the entire second floor: an exhibition about Frank Lloyd Wright.

Wright's connection to the Guggenheim is that he designed the famous Guggenheim museum in New York. And since he has such strong Arizona connections, both Teriann and I were already familiar with many of his works. It was a well-put-together exhibition, with a bit of history alongside drawings and models. Far more interesting, methinks, than a typical modern art exhibition.

All in all, a great weekend!

New York Philharmonic

2010-02-08T11:33:00.003-07:00

Over the last year and a half, I've been fortunate enough to see some of the world's great musicians perform. This didn't dampen my anticipation at all, though, for the concert I went to last Thursday. The New York Phil and their new music director, Alan Gilbert, have been all over the (classical music) news now for some time; partly because the press has been almost completely positive about him, and partly because the New York Phil is arguably the United States' most distinguished orchestra, I was really looking forward to it. Excited, even, like a kid going to a carnival. And with that excitement, I made no claim to objectivity: I was fully prepared to be blown away, to be transported, to witness the best orchestra I had ever witnessed...

But then they opened with Haydn. And not a charming, witty Haydn symphony, a wallowing, minor-key yawn that began with — and seemed to remain — a slow movement. Though the people sitting behind me (who I think were music students) were not impressed by the string section, my good will saw me through to the next piece, John Adams' The Wound Dresser. Again, I have to admit that I'm not impartial: I have known and loved that piece for years. Sometimes, though, hearing a piece you love — from the balcony played noncommittally — can be an underwhelming experience. Plus, as it's a slowly unfolding, almost meditative work, it wasn't served well by the dreary piece it followed.

As lukewarm as I was feeling at the intermission, things started looking up: their performance of Schubert's 'Unfinished' Symphony was far superior to the Haitink/London Symphony performance of it I saw in October (that may have more to do with Bernard Haitink's careful and cautious reading of it). Their final piece, Berg's Three Orchestral Pieces, is a favorite of mine and they performed it well.

They didn't shine through, however, until the encores. Maybe they (or Gilbert?) loosened up — the weight of a European tour lifted. But both encores, Beethoven's Egmont Overture and Bernstein's Lonely Town from On the Town, were beyond perfect. They crept into that rare kind of music making that makes you react viscerally rather than critically. They gave me that transcendental something I had come for, and more than made up for an otherwise tepid concert.

One final thing: as a young trumpet player, I have long admired the principal trumpet player of the NYP, Philip Smith. Maybe that's understating it: Philip Smith makes the trumpet sound how it is supposed to sound. Hearing him play live (there were plenty of trumpet solos in Adams' piece) was something I had wanted to do for at least the last decade. So Mr. Smith, in case you have a google notification set up for your name, Bravo to you, sir!

The Rest of January: Taylor's Visit, Celebs, and Art

2010-01-31T15:25:00.000-07:00

Teriann and I got a welcome 3-day break from our job-hunting/schoolwork this week as my good friend Taylor Morris came to visit. As you can see from the link, Taylor is something of a rockstar — he tours with a violin/fiddling/rock band called Barrage. Though he wouldn't admit it, he has 'made it' as a musician in a way I can only wistfully peer at through my graduate school cell bars. I knew him way back when, though, so when he had a few days off from Barrage's tour of the Netherlands and Belgium, he popped over to London to visit.

The first night, we saw a concert in Wigmore Hall. The concert itself wasn't very good (that's a subject for another day), but the venue is a landmark of the musical world, and I hadn't yet been. Plus I hadn't seen Taylor for quite a while — except for one quick lunch in December — so it was a fun night.

Over the next two days, we went to the National Gallery (more on that in a moment), and there are classic pictures of us feeding squirrels and swans (what else does one do in London?) in this facebook album, but a highlight for me was seeing James Earl Jones and Phylicia Rashad in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

James didn't want to take pictures, but Phylicia Rashad/Mrs. Huxtable was more than happy to. In addition to being a moving actress (she all but disappeared into her fat-old-lady walk and voice), she's a wonderful person: she was very nice to us, asking us where we're from and so on, and she exuded a kind of peace I find it difficult to explain. Composure mixed with wisdom, I think.

Back to the National Gallery: I've been there several times before, but on this trip I was particularly struck by a few particular images: a religious scene by Titian and Monet's painting of Westminster Palace. This visit also coincided with the book I've been reading this week, Michael Frayn's Headlong (I'm still on my string of winners — I can't recommend it highly enough), which is centered around an art historian, so art has definitely been on the brain lately. And Teriann and I also went to see the "Turner and the Masters" exhibition at the Tate this weekend — in fact, I'm just realizing how much my attitude towards art has changed over the past year and a half. How could it not, when I'm surrounded by art galleries? It's like music: the more you go to concerts (art galleries) and trace threads through the history of the composers (artists), the more enjoyable and rewarding it becomes.

Finally, so I don't have to post it separately, here's a list of some of the traveling we have planned for the upcoming months. As always, you'll be seeing pics soon!

February: Bilbao, Spain and Lisbon, Portugal
March: Istanbul, Turkey
April: The UK countryside with Louie & Suzanne (!)
May: Stockholm, Sweden and coasteering in Wales
June: Bled, Slovenia

The Waterworks

2010-01-21T15:04:00.004-07:00

Well, I'm back to London. After a blissful month of doing no work whatsoever (thank you wonderful Phoenix people), I was thrown into the strange and stressful world of having to complete my piano concerto in a week. Outside, it looked like this:

but instead of playing in the snow, I could only huddle in front of my computer — check a phrase or two at the piano — back to the computer — and so on. My world was lit by the glow of the screen. After several coffee-riddled nights and bleary days, it is indeed complete, and I'm not entirely unhappy with it. We'll see how that opinion stands up to performance.

Despite the immersive week, I somehow managed to finish reading E. L. Doctorow's The Waterworks. I admit that I'm not unbiased — I'm already an avid fan of Doctorow. Still, I was worried at the beginning. The thing takes so long to get off the ground, I was starting to worry whether it ever would.

Having finished it, though, I'm so glad I stuck through the first 60-or-so pages. What a novel. Even with a plot that is less-than-blockbuster material, it doesn't matter because the writing is so pristine. Somehow the mediocre plot gives way to the most fully-formed characters I've ever read, and, more importantly, to an entire era. The 1871 of The Waterworks is somehow strangely more convincing than the 1871 of Mark Twain — characters wrestle with post-Civil War problems and debate the new scientific discoveries of the era.

In a way, it's difficult to sum up. It's a small book, 250 easy pages, but feels immense and complete. It deals with few characters, yet by the end a whole culture — including me — are caught up in its sweeping themes. It's not a masterpiece, but it's close enough that I still eagerly await my next Doctorow read.

The Looooong First Week of December

2009-12-09T03:07:00.001-07:00

So now that we've already been to the Christmas markets in Cologne, the flight home on December 10 has been looming large in our minds. What were we to do to keep the endless waiting off our minds?

We started off by taking our first London Walk; when we arrived in Covent Garden, the city was looking festive.

Even though we know the Covent Garden area quite well, we were still shown some cool things we hadn't come across. First among them: Floral Hall,

and a balcony with a great view of the market.

We also went in the Royal Courts of Justice and the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons. We liked this place so much (especially Teriann) that we went back two days later to spend more time there.

This is the antithesis of the Imperial War Museum — rather than documenting all the energies humans have spent over the centuries killing each other, the Hunterian Museum (named after 18th-century all-purpose scientist John Hunter) documents all the energies humans have spent over the centuries learning about science and anatomy and health. Consisting of a more-interesting-than-you-would-think exhibit about the history of surgery and an unbelievably diverse collection of preserved dissections, this museum is somehow fascinating without drifting into pedantry.

And after a fairly vanilla weekend that included a choir concert and our flat Christmas party, we saw a fantastic show, La Cage Aux Folles, on Monday night — because it was our year-and-a-half anniversary.

You won't be hearing from me for a while because we're finally going home tomorrow. And the monthly photos thing won't continue (who cares what my favorite cathedrals are anyway?). So long until the new year!

Christmastime in Cologne

2009-12-03T13:17:00.007-07:00

Last weekend, Teriann and I took a great trip to the Christmas markets in Cologne to take our minds off the interminable wait to come home.

Cologne is not a pretty city. It was almost completely flattened during WWII, so, except for the massive Dom, consists of fairly drab post-war buildings. Perhaps because of this, though, I have never seen a city get more dressed up for Christmas. Both public spaces and individual businesses were decked out in garlands, lights, and decorations. Combined with the excellent food and the friendly people, we ended up really loving our weekend there.

They even turned one of the river boats into a Christmas market.

And Teriann indulged on the local beer!

Still, there's a small part of town that survived the bombs, where buildings still lean over narrow lanes.

The pink one was our hotel, from which we could see the Rhine.

We also went the Chocolate Museum (awesome) and the Dom (actually less interesting than I anticipated).

Far and away the highlight of our weekend, though, was stumbling into Papa Joe's Biersalon, which is apparently the only place to be in Cologne. It was a raucous pub where no one spoke English and the music was provided by these two animatronic gentlemen.

The result was the most stereotypical German experience I've ever had: a sing-along to 'Rut sin die Rusen' (Red are the Roses).

See more pictures in the facebook album.

Favorite Cathedrals

2009-12-01T00:36:00.015-07:00

One the distinguishing characteristics of Europe is, of course, the cathedrals. No city worth its salt is without one. Bear in mind that these are only my favorite five from the dozens we've visited over the last year... among them, Salisbury, St. Paul's, Notre-Dame (Paris), Stephansdom (Vienna), Basilica di San Marco (Venice), Köln, and St. Peter's (Vatican City).

5. St. Vitus's Cathedral, Prague

Sure, the audioguide is a shocking ripoff, but for sheer opulence, St. Vitus's provides constant eye candy. And situated at the top of Prague Castle, it's the dominant feature of the skyline no matter where you are in the city.

4. Strasbourg Cathedral

I wasn't prepared for how massive or intricate this cathedral is. For centuries it was the tallest building in the world, and inside, there's a beautiful organ, an astronomical clock, and a sculpture that consists of not just a person or two, but an entire landscape.

3. Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

Though construction began in 1883, it's still not finished. Any blurb I could write about it here would be madly insufficient. Read about it here or there are pictures here. It is hands-down the most unique cathedral — or for that matter, construction site — anywhere in the world.

2. Duomo, Florence

Aside from being one of the oldest of the world's massive churches (its dome precedes St. Peter's by almost a century), its pink, green, and white facade looks like a real-life version of the Small World ride.

1. Westminster Abbey

No, it's not the biggest; some may even argue that it's not the most opulent. And — what the heck — it's not even technically a cathedral. But it is my favorite. Because of its history, its atmosphere, and its Thanksgiving dinners, it will always be my favorite.

Shock Doctrine

2009-11-16T14:15:00.002-07:00

Surely you remember when you first read a book that stuck out for years to come as one of your favorites; for me, they seem come in spates. For example, in the year from roughly May 2004, my literary horizons were blown open by Quinn's Ishmael, Vonnegut, Calvino, and Gilgamesh. Now, I seem to be in another period of discovery.

I wrote here earlier about Hesse's incomparable Glass Bead Game. Its beauty lies in its intellectual abstraction; it exists above the plane of lowly human troubles. So too, does Ishmael, for years my starting point and guidebook to human history. And yet, for all their insights, their intellectual concerns seem worlds away from the elbow-deep reality of the book I just finished.

It's as though someone took Hesse and Quinn's bright light of understanding and aimed it in the murky recesses of the past thirty years. The result is not always comfortable — it is, in fact, terrifying — but it is more immediate and urgently relevant than I knew a book could be. It is Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine.

I couldn't overstate how important this book is; non-partisan (Clinton and Lawrence Summers get the same scrutiny as Bush & Co.), impeccably researched, and surprisingly calm given the outrageous subject matter, it deserves to be a classic in the years to come as the definitive people's history of right now.

You may be getting a copy of this from me in the near future. Not as a Christmas present (I know you didn't ask for it), and not because I think you should vote a particular way, but just because I think everyone should be aware of this book. If you want one, tell me. If you don't want it littering your already over-crowded bookshelf, find it at your local library.

In any case, it would mean a lot to me; give it a read; I want to hear what you think.

Jurowski at the RCM

2009-11-15T17:14:00.004-07:00

As I mentioned earlier, Vladimir Jurowski has been around College this week, preparing for the Schnittke/Prokofiev concert tonight. I just got back from it, and it was absolutely fantastic.

The Schnittke wasn't exactly my bag. It veered too wildly between camp and meandering modernism. I could tell, however, that it was being delivered forcefully; Jurowski clearly had an interpretation and exacted it from the orchestra. The second half brought better music — Prokofiev's Sixth Symphony — and the result was dynamite. It's not just that his interpretations are lucid and musical; it's that he implements them so clearly. Like the best actors who seem to become their character, he completely dissolves into the music, willing to make whatever gesture is necessary to get the sound he wants, regardless of whether that gesture might come from the standard conducting playbook. I might also add that, though I've heard the RCM orchestra several times before, this was by far the most responsive, tight, and professional performance I've heard from it.

He is, I feel safe to say, the best conductor I've ever witnessed in person. True, I've not yet seen Abbado, Barenboim, Gergiev, or a host of others, but thanks to spending a year in London I have seen Salonen (quite regularly), Tilson Thomas, Haitink, Jansons, Fischer, Zinman, and Gustavo 'the Dude' Dudamel. And for my money, Jurowski's the Dude.

Two Reminders

2009-11-13T01:52:00.002-07:00

Two reminders of why I love London occurred just within the last week.

On Friday, I went to an open rehearsal of Michael Tilson Thomas (music director of the San Francisco Symphony) with the London Symphony Orchestra, to watch them rehearse Schubert, Mahler (a wonderful short piece I hadn't heard before: Blumine), and Berg's Three Pieces. Besides being a fantastic musical experience, which it was (given the option, I would always rather go to the final rehearsal than the performance itself), I got to see the LSO in true form. The orchestra has a reputation for treating conductors as equals and generally having an ego, but of course one never sees it at a concert. At rehearsal, though, the horn players are constantly fiddling with their iPhones and the percussionists practice Berg while the orchestra is rehearsing Schubert. Best moment of all, though: during one complex point in the Berg, MTT got excited and strayed from his clear 4- or 8-pattern. He stopped to say something, but the timpanist interrupts: "Michael, what are you beating at bar forty?" He says this... to Michael Tilson Thomas... with the entire orchestra sitting there. But of course MTT handles it like a professional: before briskly moving on with whatever he was going to say, he replies, "Well, let's find out."

And last night, after the composition concert (which went quite well, I thought), we headed down to the bar that's underneath the Recital Hall. A few people were already down there, including a few people playing pool, including... no, it can't be... it is! Vladimir Jurowski, the music director of the London Philharmonic. I should explain that he's conducting a concert with the RCM Symphony Orchestra this weekend, and he was obviously there for a rehearsal. But still, I have to admit that I'm a little proud to be studying at a school where one finds the music director of the London Philharmonic playing pool in the student bar.

Prague and Changes

2009-11-08T12:42:00.007-07:00

Almost a month ago now, Teriann and I went to Prague with our flatmates Sarah and Bryce. It was a wonderful trip for a number of reasons — good food, good music, good company, beautiful scenery — but it also signaled some of the changes that have come across our life in London lately.

First, a few highlights of the trip. Prague is gorgeous; distinctive and photogenic.

The leaves were changing in the local park,

and the stained glass windows in St. Vitus's Cathedral were spectacular.

For more pics, here's the facebook album.

The changes, though, have been significant. When we moved here, the house consisted of two singles and three other couples. Living with other couples suited us well, as we enjoyed going out with them and generally getting into shenanigans. Over the last month, though, two of the couples have broken up, drastically changing the dynamics of the house.

One of those couples, if you haven't guessed already, is Sarah and Bryce; Prague was still a good time, but Bryce moved out shortly thereafter and I already miss him. Ed moved out as well, and I miss having his legendary craziness around too. And more singles in the house inevitably means more drama.

Don't get me wrong, we still love our house and our flatmates, but as they say, nothing stays the same.

It has taken a long time...

2009-11-01T13:29:00.002-07:00

...but my website is finally all-new and updated with my new music from the last year or so. Give it a look! And a listen!

http://tompetersonmusic.com

Favorite Hideaways

2009-11-01T04:42:00.009-07:00

For this month's installment of the photo series, here are some images of my favorite small town nooks and crannies scattered around the continent.

5. Eze, France

Eze is like nothing I've ever seen. It's less of a village than it is an enormous, rambling castle carved into a cliff overlooking the Mediterranean. Shops are carved into nooks wherever they can fit, and the paths that serve as roads roam here and there, up and down stairs, through archways. It is, however, rather two-dimensional. You see it, it's beautiful, but then there's nothing to do. Except take the bus to Monaco or Nice, of course.

4. Colmar, France

The fairy-tale capital of half-timbered buildings, leaning walls, low beams, and narrow lanes. Despite its tiny size, it reputedly has a notable art gallery (which we didn't visit... the scenery was enough for us) and is in a region full of cool stuff to do (Strasbourg, Haut-Koensigsburg, monkey feeding, etc.).

3. Hohenschwangau, Germany

Sandwiched between two castles (including possibly the most famous one of them all, Neuschwanstein), Hohenschwangau is tough to beat. Even without them, though, this little hamlet nestles between craggy mountains, a beautiful gorge, two lakes, and thick, Bavarian forest.

2. Hallstatt, Austria

A very close second: this snowglobe of a town is wedged between a steep mountain (we never saw the top through the mist) and a flat, still lake. When you get bored of being dazzled by the town and the food, there are caves, mines, and the lake to explore.

1. Vernazza, Italy

The last word in slowing one's heart rate. I could stay here for weeks and it would probably still feel like a few minutes. Just big enough to provide modern conveniences (train station, post office, interesting shops) but small enough to immediately comprehend (one main street, a few winding narrow streets) and completely without that annoying 20th century phenomenon known as the car, Vernazza is stunning. No matter how much of the world I see in my life, it's hard to imagine this ever not being one of my favorite places on it.

October Hodgepodge

2009-10-16T02:49:00.010-07:00

There's quite a few unrelated strains of thought coursing through me at the moment. Allow me to share:

England, My England

I've been having issues with this country lately. The first year went quite smoothly: we marveled at the healthcare system, the postal system, the transport system. Here is a nation, we thought, that has things figured out. But lately, it seems to be slowly unraveling.

Maybe it's a simple answer: the little quirks that at first I found charming have worn their charm thin over time. After all, this is the nation in which a few environmentalists were able to climb onto the — need I say it? strictly forbidden — roof of the Houses of Parliament with a very tall ladder. If you think I'm kidding, read this; can you imagine some yahoos making it to the top of the Capitol in Washington? It just wouldn't happen.

Or perhaps it is that there is tangible change afoot: the postal service is on strike, nearly every week a different rail operator union goes on strike (this week most services out of Paddington are not running or delayed), and now British Airways (who we are flying home with in December) is threatening a strike.

[Let me make something clear: these unions do not have a historical understanding of why unions were formed in the first place. Workers did not organize so that no one would ever lose their job; they were created for bargaining power to ensure their rights were upheld. Every one of these recent strikes is based not on reason or justice or even greed, only a lack of historical understanding.]

I think the main sea change, however, is that recently I have become more aware of a vein in British thought and society that is bitterly aware of their nation's decline since the Second World War. They see far more acutely than I how far downhill their rail system has slidden since privatization; they lament how their wealth built up the fledgling states of the European Union, an institution that now dwarfs them in financial and political power. Nowhere was this course of thought more blatantly exposed to me than in a film I recently saw, England, My England. Ostensibly about the life of Henry Purcell, the script seemed more bent on mourning post-imperial Britain than documenting the great composer.

I'm not saying, of course, that America — or any country — has it completely figured out. And without a doubt there is much to love and admire in the UK. Still, I feel that my sketched view of it in these past few weeks has perhaps been colored in a bit more accurately.

My Big Project

I'm working on my first actual 'big' piece of music, a piano concerto. It's based on Steven Millhauser's short story, Cathay. I'm trying to finish the first movement within the next two weeks for a competition, but it's not going smoothly. Usually I love writing music, but I have to be careful that my stress at the moment doesn't quash the overall inspiration.

Entelechy

For a reason unknown to myself or anyone else, I decided to read Rudolf Carnap's Introduction to the Philosophy of Science. It's not what I thought it would be, and I didn't finish it.

However, in the opening chapters, it introduces a concept advocated by Hans Driesch called entelechy (a term he adopted from Aristotle). I'll spare you the technical bits (in fact, in the book it is faulted for lack of technical bits), but in essence, Driesch said that one won't ever understand a biological organism if one examines it as a machine only. There's an unidentifiable other present, a force not currently measurable but that nonetheless separates life from death. He's not talking about God; Driesch likens it to science's early understanding (and misunderstanding) of magnetism and electrical fields.

My money's on this, actually. Though already it's an old (and I think mostly discarded) theory, I think he's right and that a few years down the road (who knows how many?) he'll be regarded as having guessed correctly — albeit with some discrepancies, of course. The history of science is full of people who, without the information or equipment we have today, guessed mostly correctly about the presence of something they did not yet understand. If anyone has any info about how this has (or hasn't) developed, I'd be both interested and grateful.

The Glass Bead Game

I finished it at last. Life-changing. Absolutely devastating. By a mile it's my favorite book of all time. Like his more famous and accessible Siddhartha, the end of the book turns toward the idea of renewal, the cycle of youth and age, and how man can achieve some semblance of immortality through passing down their ideas, discoveries, and advancements.

"With a strange, sorrowful tug at his heart he sensed the recurrence and reversal of the great experience of his youth, and at the same time had that austere feeling, at once constricting and stirring, that afternoon had set in, that youth was gone and noonday passed, that the blossom had become a fruit."

The Riviera

2009-10-14T05:08:00.009-07:00

It's mid-October, the time of year when the weather finally makes Phoenix a pleasant place. Turns out that it's about the same time of year the weather starts to make London unpleasant. So this weekend we chased the last remaining bit of summer down to the south of France.

If Ibiza is Europe's Las Vegas, than Nice and the French Riviera is Europe's Southern California. Beaches alternate with rolling hills and craggy outcroppings, creating bay after bay, and all richly carpeted with lush flora. It's the kind of place that when you step off the plane, the walkway to the terminal building is glass so you can see the pinkish resort town in the distance sweeping towards the deep blue Mediterranean. Mind you this is before you even get to the terminal building.

The coastline is dotted with dozens of towns, each with a different flavor and claim to fame (Cannes for its film festival, St. Tropez for its beach). Since we had two days, we picked out three towns: Eze, Monaco, and Nice.

Eze is really three places. East of Nice, there's a little cluster of buildings down by the ocean with a train station; up over the cliff and inland, there's a nondescript town where the bus let us off; but perched high on the peak between them is the medieval village of Eze. Eze is like nothing I've ever seen. It's less of a village than it is an enormous, rambling castle. Shops are carved into nooks wherever they can fit, and the paths that serve as roads roam here and there, up and down stairs, through archways.

After a quick bite to eat, we headed off to Monaco. At this point, I should explain that because we left London so early in the morning, we only had 2 hours of sleep the night before. So when we got to our hotel in Monaco, we were pretty exhausted. We settled in for a little nap around 3:00, I set the alarm for about 4:00, and we woke up at... 7:15. Crap.

Oh well. We set out to find dinner and found the city surprisingly empty. I know October isn't exactly the high season, but it was early October and the weather was still pretty hot. Even the area around the famed Casino wasn't too hoppin'. We eventually found a nice place to eat, but our overall impression of the city was: where are all the people?

Also, for a place so notorious as a stomping ground of the rich and famous, it's surprisingly plain. It could be any coastal town built up in the 1960s heyday of bland architecture. Oh yeah, except for those yachts in the harbor.

The next morning we took the train back to Nice, which is more colorful and has far more character. We started the day with a bit of a dud, the Russian Orthodox Cathedral.

Looks great, right? Well, turns out it's in a pretty lousy part of town and is, on Sunday mornings at least, closed for services.

The rest of Nice, though, is quite wonderful. There are both modern open spaces

and a great Old Town that feels more like neighbors Spain or Italy than France. Here, winding, narrow alleyways suddenly let out onto squares; in such heavy sunlight, the effects are dramatic.

My favorite thing, though, was the walk up the mountain to a park and man-made waterfall; with your back to a rushing waterfall, this is the view.

Also while on the mountain, I discovered why the view from the airport is so impressive. It's right at the edge of the bay's natural arc. I thought this photo was one of the best I had ever taken until I realized that I had framed, with exotic foliage, the Nice airport.

We spent the evening lounging, which given the laid-back attitude towards everything in this beach town, seemed a good way to while away our last few hours.

See the facebook photo album here.

London Off the Beaten Track

2009-10-01T01:09:00.008-07:00

For October's photo series, I'd like to show you around some lesser-known places in London. Places that don't exactly have the grandeur of, say, Westminster Abbey, but that don't have the crowds or the notoriety either.

The pelicans in St. James' Park: they're not your typical ducks or geese, and the entire setting is an absolute oasis. Can you believe that this is only a few steps away from the dreary government buildings of Whitehall?

The Lido in Hyde Park is my favorite place to get lunch in London. It looks rather dreary in this February photo, but on a sunny day, a table by the water is the place to be.

The World Food Cafe in Neal's Yard, Covent Garden is a close second. Everything is vegetarian, but that doesn't stop it from being delicious!

Hampstead Heath is a massive park in northern London, but it feels further away. Over the centuries, it has been a haven for artists and writers. It's an odd mix of expansive fields and dense forests, making it easy to see why C.S. Lewis used it as his inspiration for Narnia.

The Mineral Room in Harrod's, the world's largest store, offers everything from fossils and dinosaur bones to this incredible malachite table.

The Hammersmith Bridge spans the river Thames west of town. On the nearby bank is the most British bankside imaginable: a row of pubs.

Southbank Beach. Yes, there is a beach (of sorts) right in the center of town, stretching along the south bank of the river from Royal Festival Hall all the way down to the Globe Theatre. Admittedly it's no white-sand paradise, but at low tide there are sand castle builders and the sheer oddity of standing on a beach crowded in by familiar landmarks makes it worth a look.

Oh yeah, and happy 100th post :)

Kew Gardens

2009-09-30T04:45:00.004-07:00

We live about six or so miles west of the center of London, depending on which point you choose as the center. It's relatively convenient (especially considering where some of my friends live) to get pretty much anywhere in town in about half an hour. There is one major attraction in London, however, that we can simply walk to: Kew Botanical Gardens.

Even the walk down there is quite nice, crossing the river Thames. Hard to believe it's only about a mile from our house.

I've only ever been to the Desert Botanical Gardens (which, let's face it, is pretty much an area of the desert that they charge you to look at) so I was a little skeptical about this; Kew, however, is widely considered to be the best botanical garden in the world. So we had to go there.

And I have to admit: it's like nothing I've ever seen.

Even their display of cacti is better than the Desert Botanical Garden's!

Also on the grounds is Kew Palace.

It's the same color as Teriann's shirt!

This was the residence of King George III — the king we beat in the Revolutionary War! Yeah, we kicked your ass!

Turns out, though, that he wasn't such a bad guy. Compared to the pavilion of tyrants and despots that is the British line of kings, he was a devoted family man. He developed and donated to many branches of culture — libraries, museums, and music — and was a keyboardist and flutist himself. Here's his rather unique porcelain flute.

I'm still glad we beat him, but it was interesting to learn more about him than what they tell you about him in American textbooks, which is... nothing.

Other features of Kew include the Palm House, home of the oldest potted plant in the world. The oldest potted plant! you say, Who cares? Well, like so many trivial things in this ancient land, this diagonal palm is older than America, having been moved to Kew Gardens in 1775.

My favorite, though, was the Japanese garden, in which a precisely combed rock zen garden takes the place of water. It is still, striking, and peaceful.

Another Tradition Exchange Update!

2009-09-24T03:31:00.003-07:00

Does anyone think this might catch on?

Read this article.

Mom Came to Visit!

2009-09-23T15:03:00.001-07:00

August flew by in a flash. Blink. It's gone. After the constant travel of July, we needed a breather. I worked at the library — that's about it.

But on September 6, Mom arrived!

We spent our first day doing a general walking tour of the city, but, like everyone else who has come to visit, Mom soon felt jet lag creeping up so we had an early night.

During our next two days in London, we hit all the major sights — Westminster Abbey, Tower of London, St. James and Hyde Parks, the Natural History Museum — as well as some more off the beaten track. I took her on a mini-tour of the College (hey, she asked!), and she really enjoyed seeing St. Stephen's Gloucester Road and rummaging around old book shops. We even took in two really good shows, Wicked (pretty good) and As You Like It at the Globe (probably the best live performance of music or theatre I've ever seen).

Mom wanted to see Stonehenge, and I wanted her to see a little of England outside London (because London and England may as well be different countries!), so we took a train to Salisbury, near Stonehenge.

It was cold and windy!

Salisbury is a charming little town, and the cathedral (the tallest in England) is more impressively decorated than your typical medieval cathedral. Stonehenge makes an appearance in the stained glass,

the set of carved choir stalls are both original (pre-Renaissance!) and strikingly beautiful, and the cathedral as a whole is generally a pleasant place to be.

I'm looking forward to going back with Teriann soon!

Thus ended our time in jolly old England, and the three of us boarded a plane at an absurdly early hour Thursday morning bound for Bavaria.

There's no need to relive the frustrating events in a trip, but our rental car reservation wasn't right. Instead of a small car with an automatic transmission, they gave us a big one with a manual.

This would initially seem to be a huge coup: a BMW to drive around the Alps! And true, Mom hardly had any problems at all with the stick shift. But the car was incredibly confusing; we spent 15 minutes trying to figure out how to turn the radio off! And it was quite bulky, which didn't exactly come in handy on the tiny village roads of Austria.

Once we figured out how to turn the radio off, we set off for Hohenschwangau, home of the iconic Neuschwanstein castle. Yes, Teriann and I already visited Neuschwanstein in June, but Mom really wanted to see it. And who could complain about going again? Look at this!

As I explained in June, you actually tour two castles. The famous one on the hill was built by King Ludwig II, but the first castle you tour is Hohenschwangau, where Ludwig grew up. What a view!

Though photography is not allowed on the tours, this time I snuck pictures of two of my favorite things in Hohenschwangau, this fantastic writing desk,

and this statue with its malachite mountain.

And in between our tours, we made time to feed the swans at Alpsee, a tiny lake between the castles. This is pretty much what we do when we travel: feed animals.

This is probably my all-time favorite pic from my own Photographing Wildlife series. Maybe Teriann will let me split her book deal :)

The tour of Neuscwanstein itself was, of course, fantastic. None of the splendor or complete over-the-top-ness was lost on us our second time through. We then had a wonderful dinner (you've heard me say it: Germany has the best food in the world) and called it a night.

Our goal for the next day was to make it to Hallstatt, a tiny town in the Salzkammergut region of Austria. On the way, though, we spent a considerable amount of time shopping in the charming Christmas store in Hohenschwangau, stopped to admire the humble Plansee (a small lake with astonishingly clear water), and made a remarkable find: Ettal.

It's a monastery and basilica built and decorated in the most exquisite Baroque fashion. A picture doesn't do justice to the experience of walking in the place, but here's an example: the organ.

The frescoes on the dome are, in my humble opinion, just as good as anywhere in the world. They're not as famous as, say, the Sistine Chapel because they're considerably newer (around the 17th or 18th century), but they're cut from the same dramatic, vibrant, dazzling cloth.

Being by this time considerably behind the loose schedule we had set out for the day, we drove straight through to Hallstatt.

Hallstatt is a lot like Vernazza. Instead of the sea, there's a lake with dramatic, neck-achingly tall mountains. Instead of Italian, they speak German. Instead of pesto, they eat schnitzel. But the fantastic scenery remains; the slower pace of life remains; and the power of the quaint little village to relax and soothe remains.

This was our hotel as seen from the mountain side of town.

One of the most fascinating things about this town is the graveyard in the Catholic church up the hill. If one needed confirmation that this place is a world away from ours, consider this: they bury their dead considerably differently. Each grave is a tended garden adorned with a headstone that is more artwork than dreary slab. Some had pictures of the deceased. Some had still-lit candles.

And in the back of the graveyard, a small chapel containing these:

About 1,200 of them in fact. All specifically wished in their will to be included here; most are from past centuries, but the last skull added was that of a woman who died in 1985.

But enough of the macabre — look at the views!

We desperately wished we could have stayed longer. There was so much more to see: one of the oldest salt mines in the world, a lake for cruising, and ice caves in the mountains. But with heavy hearts we pointed the Bimmer towards our final stop on our Austrian tour: Vienna.

Perhaps it was a sign of shoddy planning; or perhaps just a fortuitous coincidence, but while plotting our course to Vienna the night before our departure, I came across a name I recognized: Steinbach am Attersee. I recognized it from a book I had read about Mahler's composing cabins. Like many musicians, Mahler escaped from the city to the countryside in the summer, but uniquely, he had small huts/houses built a short walk from his summer homes that were for composing only. All three huts still survive, so since we were passing through Steinbach anyway, we pulled over and I asked a local if he knew where exactly it was.

Turns out it is in what is now Seefeld, a small community just up the road from Steinbach built around the Gasthof Föttinger, which, as it turns out, is the inn the Mahler family stayed at between 1893 and 1896. It's quite beautiful in its own right.

All I had to do was ask at the front desk and they gave me the key! A short walk towards the lake brought us to the composing house.

Despite the overeager Mahler society who had installed a motion sensing sound system to play bits of Mahler's work to visitors, it was still quite an experience; we were visiting hallowed space. This was Mahler's piano!

Despite the surroundings which have, ahem... filled in during the past century (on one side, a scuba teaching school, on the other, a trailer park; no, I could not have made that up, there is actually a trailer park next to Mahler's secluded composing spot), the tiny house's position on the edge of the vast and powerful Attersee is still inspiring... somehow both overwhelming and impossibly quiet.

Before we left, we had a delicious lunch at the Föttinger and Mom took a minute out to show us how she really felt about the car.

Then it was off to Vienna!

Vienna is a city with which I instantly connected. It's arguably the most important city in music history (Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, and countless others called it home) and yet today, it pulls off London's trick of miraculously blending deep history with modern vitality.

The main road into town from the train station, for instance, is very cosmopolitan,

sprinkled with piano shops, trendy galleries, and — lo and behold! — public drinking fountains!

And yet, there's a quaintness about old, historic Vienna. The Volksgarten (People's Garden) near the palace complex is very beautiful

and the city's traffic is about half cars, half horse-drawn carriages.

This dichotomy was reflected in our visit: yes, our hotel reservation didn't work out and we had to be shuttled to one quite a way across town; yes, the Spanish Riding School and Stephansdom were both a little disappointing. But our new hotel happened to be on a convenient tram line (trams, by the way, are now my favorite form of public transport — brilliant!), and attractions like Mozart's House and the traveling carnival/beer garden in front of Old City Hall were very enjoyable.

We also stopped to take a picture in front of Beethoven's house

and had a delicious lunch in a charming restaurant (Wiener schnitzel, of course).

I suppose that when I think of our time in Vienna, though, I'll think of our first night. A bit tired and ragged from the ordeal with the hotel switcheroo, we weren't defeated. We walked through a city lit up as if in an evening gown, strolling past centuries-old churches and fountains, past modern, glittering windowfronts. We paused to listen to some street performers playing Schubert's Ave Maria. Where better to hear it? Near the giant, Gothic cathedral that marks the center of town, we settled on a funky, colorful, American-themed bar & grill called Sparky's (there was even a poster of Arizona on the wall inside) to settle down for a comfy wrap-up to our week of travel.

Thanks for coming to visit, Ma :)

See the facebook album here.

Bella Italia 2: Florence, Vernazza, and Pisa

2009-09-19T04:13:00.000-07:00

I know this is ridiculously late. I can feel through the soulless synapses of the interweb that you're upset. So indulge me: transport yourself back two months to July-land, to a time long ago when Steph, Art, Teriann, and I arrived in Florence.

Florence (or Firenze for you Italian sticklers) is a beautiful city; I loved it when I was there two years ago, but it is so much better with my wifey :)

Here's the views from our hotel window on Piazza della Reppublica.

The major feature of Florence is the massive and ancient Duomo (it's poking over the buildings in the background of the picture above), so we climbed it. Even if it wasn't built more than five centuries ago (1436!), it would still be an engineering marvel; it's still the largest brick and mortar dome ever built.

What a view!

We also visited the Bargello, where we imitated a few sculptures,

and headed off the next morning to the Cinque de Terre.

The Cinque de Terre is a collection of pastel-colored buildings clinging to the Mediterranean coast on the Italian Riviera. It is a haven of a slower pace of life, a national park laced with hiking trails, and home to a little piece of heaven: Vernazza.

We climbed the trail along the coastline to Manarola; it's hard to find words, so I'll stick with pictures.

And took a boat ride back to Vernazza.

It was the perfect way to wind down a long and tiring trek. We didn't want to leave.

However, our plane tickets beckoned, so sadly, we got an early morning train to Pisa. We had a few hours before we had to be at the airport, so we planned a surgically precise operation. We had tickets booked for the leaning tower (stupidly expensive) so we took a taxi there and back, stopping just long enough to climb to the top and take the obligatory pictures.

Here's the view of the Pisa Duomo from the top of the leaning tower. Yes, the baptistery in the background is also leaning slightly.

By the way, the craziest thing about the leaning tower is not the spectacular engineering failure, but the walk up the circular stairs. It's like an 800 year-old funhouse because, as you climb, you have to lean forward to keep your balance, then one side, then back, then the other side... just subtle enough to trip you up once or twice!

We took a taxi back to the train station for the short train ride to the airport. We were there in no time, and we were still congratulating ourselves on how perfectly our morning plan had been executed... when disaster struck.

I don't want to relive the whole ordeal, but suffice it to say that our plane was delayed a full 24 hours and that we enjoyed a less-than-comfortable sleep in the Pisa airport.

It didn't change the fact that it was a major event in our life for people to come and visit. When they left, Teriann and I both had a bout of homesickness; thinking of it even now makes me feel a pang of it. Those two weeks were an incredibly fun and lasting reminder of the wonderful people I have to look forward to seeing when I come home.

What November Meant

2009-09-16T04:13:00.003-07:00

I thought that the election in November was going to be a positive, healing step forward for America. In most respects, I think it's fair to say that this has been the case.

Why, then, has the bitterness remained? Yes, many people including myself were bitter about Bush, but that was because he was both extremely conservative and completely inept. Why do people still feel bitter about a president who is far closer to the center and capable of fulfilling the job?

Where does the anger come from on the health care issue? Do they genuinely not care about poor people? Or do they just not value the life of a poor person dying of a disease the same way they would if that same person was, say, in a burning building? For even if they phrase their opposition as, "Nothing's free and if you pay for healthcare with taxes, your taxes will go up," there's an implicit statement: a life is not valued the same if it is sick (we won't pay for it!) rather than in a burning building or, say, a hostage situation (we already pay for it!).

And even if these people disagreed with the president, which it is their right to do, where does the hate come from? Why the unspeakably worthless congressman that shouts at the president during a speech? Does he have any conception of the number of times Bush actually lied to congress and yet people who knew the truth held some manner of decency?

Why the rally posters of Obama with his face painted like the Joker?

What the hell is going on in America right now?

Edit: this is a pretty good summation of how I feel.

Bella Italia 1: Rome

2009-09-15T01:08:00.000-07:00

Rome is not my favorite place in Europe. In fact, it may be my least favorite place in Europe. It's too hot, the people are unbelievably rude, and there's a third-world-ness about it that makes one wonder about the very first-world prices. Especially having just flown from Paris (still our trusty crew of six), Rome didn't exactly shine.

But enough of that; despite its shortcomings, there are beautiful, iconic, and historically unique places in Rome that make it a must-see at some point — even if you do get out as quick as you can thereafter.

Our first day was a walk around the city's major sights, starting with the Colosseum and the ruins of ancient Rome.

We had a guided tour of the ruins of Palatine Hill, which was far more interesting than my trip a couple years ago when I just sorta scratched my head and wondered what all the walls used to be. The guide even broke a few leafy branches off a tree, handing them out and explaining that Romans used to use the extract from the leaves to wash their clothes — so this is what ancient Romans smelled like! Cool!

Here's an ancient... something or other.

Next stop was the most beautiful part of the city: Piazza Navona.

Teriann is a Bernini sculpture :)

Close by is the only remaining building in the world that has been in continuous use (and thus hasn't fallen to ruin) since the time of ancient Rome: the Pantheon.

And nearby there is another beautiful place to be: Trevi Fountain.

It's also beautiful at night!

Day two in Rome was spent in Vatican City, checking out the wonders of the Vatican Museums, which include the Sistine Chapel, Nero's bathtub, which is made entirely of rare, expensive rose porphyry (how many people could he fit in there?),

and this angry dog.

And no visit to Vatican City would be complete without a visit to... the Vatican itself. The largest and most extravagant church in the world, it's impossible to portray it with mere pictures. It makes other cathedrals look drab and claustrophobic; and as the seat of a staggering magnitude of wealth and power, it's slightly sickening.

What was most important about Rome, however, was that it was our last two days together as the full group. It was so much fun carousing around with everyone — there's nothing quite like international shenanigans :)

Early the next morning, Adam and Julie took an early flight back home, turning our trusty six into a double date; so Steph, Art, Teriann and I grabbed the next train to Florence.

The Glass Bead Game

2009-09-01T11:01:00.002-07:00

Despite starting a month ago, I'm only a little more than halfway through Herman Hesse's book, The Glass Bead Game. It's dense stuff. But it's also wise, humbling, achingly beautiful stuff — at times it seems more like a spiritual text than a novel. Barring any radical changes of direction in its final third or so, this could well become my favorite book ever.

I've been thinking this for about a month (that is, right off the bat you get the notion that this is not an ordinary novel) because of passages like this:

"The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind chance. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity. The grace of a minuet by Handel or Couperin, the sensuality sublimated into delicate gesture to be found in many Italian composers or in Mozart, the tranquil, composed readiness for death in Bach — always there may be heard in these works a defiance, a death-defying intrepidity, a gallantry, and a note of superhuman laughter, of immortal gay serenity."

While the bulk of such insights are related to art, many other subjects weave in and out of the narrative: the dichotomy of individualism and conformity, the viability or necessity of art's place in society, and the task of separating military history from the history of the mind. It all makes for an incredibly rich experience.

Yet what moved me to write now, specifically, after 300 pages of this incredible work, was a specific passage I read last night.

I have long held as a pillar of my belief system that art of any form is borne of conflict. My primary 'evidence' (should you need to call it that) is that stories — the oldest and most basic of art forms — are built entirely upon conflict. No conflict: no story. No conflict: no art. This has led to me developing a kind of tragic lens through which I perceive any piece of art (and, too often, life). Even cheerful pieces of music or cinema are built on underlying conflicts; if they aren't, they ring hollow, and one can't genuinely appreciate or experience the happiness they're meant to convey. I stand by all these statements; indeed, in retrospect Hesse's passage below seems but a small step from where I had already come. But laying in bed, reading, I was nearly moved to tears by the new light it shed on the subject with which I had grappled for so long.

The main character (Knecht) is defending living happily to his friend who has been arguing, much as I would have, that to experience truth and art is to experience conflict and loss. Knecht replies,

"Such cheerfulness is neither frivolity nor complacency; it is supreme insight and love, affirmation of all reality, alertness on the brink of all depths and abysses; it is a virtue of saints and of knights; it is indestructible and only increases with age and nearness to death. It is the secret of beauty and the real substance of all art. The poet who praises the splendors and terrors of life in the dance-measures of his verse, the musician who sounds them in a pure, eternal present — these are bringers of light, increasers of joy and brightness on earth, even if they lead us first through tears and stress."

A Year Ago, I Was Getting On a Plane

2009-09-01T00:41:00.014-07:00

Incredibly, I have lived in London now for a year. I can still remember going to the airport so well — saying goodbye to Mom, the feeling of apprehension as we waited by the gate, even the new shoes Teriann was wearing. In some ways, it doesn't feel like it was all that long ago, and in others, it feels like it was an entirely different era.

But instead of waxing philosophical about the last year (I've done plenty of that already, thank you), I've decided to start a new monthly series of my favorite photos from the last year. They'll each have some sort of loose theme (monuments, cities, etc.); today, I'd like to kick it off with my favorite scenery photos taken over the last year.

St. James Park, London - September 3, 2008

I took this picture on our first day in London, but it still amazes me how beautiful some public spaces are here.

Gunnersbury Park, London - February 2, 2009

The day after the Super Bowl, London got its heaviest snowfall in almost twenty years, turning our local Gunnersbury Park into a winter wonderland.

Somewhere in Ireland - April 4, 2009

There are quite literally dozens of pictures from our Ireland trip that could make it onto this post; Torc Waterfall, the Cliffs of Mowher, the Burren — all were truly magnificent. This picture though, for me, shows the humbler, less obvious side of Ireland's beauty: lush, rolling hills — quiet and idyllic. When one sees the Cliffs or some other breathtaking sight, one is in awe; with this sight, however, one is at peace.

Haut-Koensigsburg, France - May 3, 2009

This vista is from the top of the Haut-Koenigsburg castle on the western edge of France, looking east onto Germany beyond.

Alpsee, Hohenschwangau, Germany - June 7, 2009

This quaint lake is near the iconic Neuschwanstein castle (which, incidentally, I'll be seeing again in just over a week) on the southern edge of Germany. While the gray peaks in the distance are in Austria, I think someone could have taken this picture in Alaska.

Manarola, Italy - July 22, 2009

As hard as I tried for none of these pictures to include any buildings, I couldn't escape this one. No other photograph captured so well the juxtaposition of the inland greenery, pastel buildings, rocky shore, and cerulean water that is so typical of the Cinque de Terre.

Dreamy Draw, Arizona - January 2, 2009

I know this is out of chronological order, but one of the major things I've been learning over here is how to appreciate the beauty of the desert. While home for Christmas, we took the dogs for a walk around Piestewa Peak, and the desert had never looked so vibrant to me before.

Wellcome to London

2009-08-31T02:52:00.004-07:00

I apologize now that I was not allowed to take photographs at the subject of this weekend's London exploration, the most unique and stomach-twisting museum I've ever been to: The Wellcome Foundation.

We went to see an exhibition called Exquisite Bodies, which chronicled the history of anatomical models. It was part curiosity, part history of public health, with a healthy dash of circus freak show thrown in for taste.

The exhibition was fascinating (and free! I Love London!) but the real event was the exhibition about the foundation's namesake, Sir Henry Wellcome. He accrued an eccentric collection of oddities from the far flung corners of the world, the likes of which belonged more, I think, in the pages of a Steven Millhauser short story than in a modern and surgically clean gallery in London. Here's a list of some of my favorite items:

torture chair with seat and back of blades
19th-century yet graphic painting of a birth
Buddhist/Shinto shrine
various reliquaries
scarificator
bleeding bowl
Lord Nelson's razor
Charles Darwin's walking stick (ivory shaft with a whalebone skull on top)
patches of tattooed skin
a copy of the 'Pain-Killer Polka'
Napoleon's toothbrush
brass corset
Chinese shoes for bound feet
collection of glass eyes
ram's head snuffbox
a mummy curled in the fetal position
Nepalese ceremonial headdress in which the top is the top of a human skull
shrunken head
guillotine blade
fragment of Jeremy Bentham's skin
lock of King George III's hair
gall bladder
Victorian chastity belt
phrenological skull
large range of surgical instruments
artificial limbs
leper clapper
and a chamber pot with the following poem inscribed:

On Your Marriage:
This Pot it is a Present Sent
Some mirth to make is only Meant
We hope the same you'll not Refuse
But keep it safe and oft it Use
When in it you want to Piss
Remember them who sent you This.

Paris Paris Paris

2009-08-31T00:41:00.000-07:00

On Monday morning, our trusty crew of six boarded the train to Paris (thank God — and by that I mean engineers and public transport infrastructure — for the Channel Tunnel). We were pretty tired.

But by the time we got to Paris, we were geared up and ready to go. We started with the incredible Saint-Chapelle, a church with some of the largest and oldest stained glass windows anywhere in the world.

It's also only a few blocks from Notre-Dame Cathedral.

The inside of this famous, iconic cathedral is surprisingly plain, especially given how beautiful and ornate the interior of Strasbourg Cathedral is, and that's nowhere near as well known.

Also on the first day, we were inaugurated to Parisian cuisine: ham and cheese. I'm pretty sure that about 90% of what I ate over our three and a half days was either bread, ham, cheese, or some combination thereof (oh yeah, and wine). So after some awesome foot-long hot dogs with melted cheese on the square in front of the cathedral (we ate soooo much on this trip), we had a break, a nap, and headed out to Bastille.

It was the night before Bastille Day (France's Independence Day), so the area was packed, and we chose a Spanish tapas restaurant. Adam and I liked it.

So did the girls.

It was Steph and Julie's first time in Europe, so they were pretty apprehensive about ordering from a menu in both French and Spanish — without English — but once they found out how good the food was, they let their worries go.

We started the next day, our first full day in the city, with a trip to Montmartre and one of the most distinctive churches I've ever seen: Sacre Coeur Basilica.

Other sights that day included the Moulin Rouge (lame),

the top of Notre-Dame (the gargoyles are incredibly cool),

and the highlight of our time in Paris: the Bastille Day fireworks by the Eiffel Tower.

It's hard to describe such an unique and masterful show — it was, without a doubt, one of the most incredible travel experiences I've ever had. The light show projected on the tower made it look like it was twisting, dancing, even jumping with the music. The crowd, the park, the atmosphere — just being with our friends who we had missed for so long in such extraordinary surroundings — it was electric.

Our last full day in Paris started out with a trip to Versailles, an elaborate palace on the outskirts of the city that has been used for diplomatic purposes for centuries. Among other uses, the treaties that ended the American Revolutionary War and World War I were signed here. As a tourist site, however, it's not nearly as interesting as some other palaces we've been too. For example, in a gallery, the walls were not covered in marble but wood painted to look like marble.

And the famous Hall of Mirrors (below) isn't really that spectacular if you've seen the Gallery of Maps in the Vatican Museum.

In fact, my favorite thing about Versailles was its overwhelming garden. We went for a boat ride on the lake,

and found a bizarre collection of beautiful buildings — too small for royals, too adorable for peasants — in a back corner. To give you some sense of the size of these grounds, these little houses were a mile or more away from the main palace.

There was still one important landmark in Paris we hadn't conquered: the Eiffel Tower. Sure, we had seen it from afar the night before, but to stand near the thing — and to go to the top — was our goal.

The Eiffel Tower is a little like the Empire State Buliding or the Colosseum in Rome — it's impossible to explain to someone how enormous it is. However big you picture it being, when you see it for the first time, you'll still be floored.

Standing underneath it, even with my wide angle lens, I can only capture part of the awesome sight.

I did climb up and touch it though!

That night, we took the elevator up as far as they would let us — the top was closed for some reason. And it was magic.

And so, on Thursday, we made our way to the airport for the second leg of our odyssey: Italy. Bon voyage!

Proms - Zinman - Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra

2009-08-29T13:38:00.003-07:00

I was expecting to like tonight's concert; in general, I'm quite a fan of Osvaldo Golijov, and even an adequate performance of Mahler's Fourth Symphony is a moving experience. I was surprised, then, that despite the Golijov, I enjoyed the concert more than I thought I would.

David Zinman is a big name conductor (he is the music director of the Zurich Tonhalle and in the summer teaches conducting at Aspen), but I'd never seen him conduct before. He is tiny, like a kind of pocket conductor; not that it matters, because he is fantastic. The Schubert overture was well-matched to his stately, glowing style that he gets from the orchestra so well. Golijov's Four Schubert Songs were rather dreary, but the Mahler was pretty close to perfect. Perhaps a bit too stately and subdued at times for my taste, but nonetheless accomplished.

The orchestra, frankly, was better than the Budapest Festival Orchestra (who were excellent) and the Bavarian Radio State Orchestra (all I could hear was Mariss Jansons grunting) — both of whom have better reputations than the Zurich Tonhalle. And it was refreshing to see Zinman only conducting what was needed. He kept the needless waving to a minimum, and it was reflected in more focused music.

Next week, two firsts for me: the Concertgebouw Orchestra (maybe this time I won't be able to hear Mariss grunting) and David Robertson. Oh, how I love the Proms...

Travel Schedule II

2009-08-19T13:03:00.002-07:00

Now that our first round of traveling is past (culminating in our glorious July trip — I will finish my posts about the trip, I promise), we've turned our attentions to our next round of European exploits.

So here goes...

August 22-23: Edinburgh
September 10-13: Austria (and Mom comes to visit! It's about time!)
October 10-11: Nice and Monaco
October 17-18: Prague
November 28-29: Cologne and Brussels Christmas markets

But we haven't yet booked tickets for the trip I'm looking forward to the most: coming home for Christmas.

Typical Weekends...

2009-08-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

...aren't so typical in London. Last weekend, for instance: Cambridge. Next weekend: Edinburgh. So what did we get up to this weekend? Just, a regular, laid-back weekend at home, right? Well, sort of.

Teriann and I finally went out to Hampton Court Palace. I went with Matt back in April, and ever since, I've been trying to get Teriann out there.

It's not as posh as more modern palaces — instead, it's grandiose in a 16th century sort of way. At the same time it is both magnificent and a reminder that the Renaissance had not yet arrived in England.

And in celebration of Henry VIII's anniversary year (they are apparently quite proud of what a monster he was), they're fixing the place up. This courtyard was just a patch of soil in April, and since then, they've recreated what a Tudor garden might have looked like.

The grounds were, as usual, in full bloom.

Here is where the oldest grape vine in the world (about 1750, they think) is kept. The ground where the roots are is kept unplanted so the vine doesn't have to compete for nutrients, and the shoots are wound inside the specially-built greenhouse. Yes, there's a plant in London that is older than America.

The chimneys in the background stick up throughout the palace, and I think they were a source of inspiration for Antonio Gaudi, the one-of-a-kind architect who shaped so much of Barcelona. It's a comparison I wouldn't have been able to make the first time I went to Hampton Court because I had not yet been to Barcelona.

Compare for yourself:

And another thing I didn't notice the first time: Sir Christopher Wren, the architect who designed St. Paul's Cathedral — and just about every other church in London — lived right across the street!

That night we went to a rock concert in a grubby little bar in Soho; one of our housemate's friends is in a band (Badtown and the Rockers) and has been staying with us for a few weeks, so we thought it'd be a good time to go see the show. For someone that is more accustomed to seeing a symphony than a rock band, I had a great time and the band was surprisingly good.

The last event of the weekend was the London Mela, an Asian/mostly-Indian festival in our local Gunnersbury Park. Though the website looked cool, it was clearly more developed than the event itself, which offered mediocre carnival food, endless sponsor tents (Ford? Really?), and not much else. There was nothing particularly Asian about the music either; there were several stages blaring pop music that was unmistakably Western, regardless of which language it was sung in.

The only thing that saved it from being a complete loss were three bizarre dinosaurs walking around. The costumes were cleverly built around performers on stilts, and to alleviate the burden of being realistic, were gleaming chrome.

The Gang in London

2009-08-11T08:54:00.000-07:00

July 9th was a day Teriann and I had been waiting for for months. Finally the morning came and the three of us (Adam had been here for a week — practically a local!) went to Heathrow to get Stephanie and Art.

Teriann was supposed to go to work that day, but she called in sick. Since Steph and Art thought that only Adam and I would be picking them up, Teriann hid while we greeted them. Just as I was explaining how sorry Teriann was that she couldn't make it, out she popped from behind a column! Totally worth it.

We brought them home to drop off their bags, and instead of immediately hitting up London's top tourist sites, the boys hit up the beer bong that had been such a hit at the Fourth of July party. Yes, we are wearing matching hats.

When we finally got on our way, we had lunch at the Lido in Hyde Park (still the best place for lunch in London in my book) and rummaged around Hyde Park and Oxford St. Here, I knight Art with a tree branch.

By the time we got to Piccadilly Circus, our fellow travelers had to take a break. 16 or so hours of sitting on a plane will do that to you! After a nap and a barbecue in our garden, we went down the road for a quiet night at the local Red Lion and Pineapple.

Friday saw four major events. 1) Photo shoot by Big Ben.

2) An incredible tour of Westminster Abbey by Graeme (who, in addition to being far more interesting than the audio tour, let us into the shrine of St. Edward the Confessor and got us seats in the Choir for Evensong. From further away in the Abbey, any music sounds like it's underwater, but up close, hearing that choir is a transporting experience.

3) A Little Night Music. Stephen Sondheim's 1973 musical is a great show and the performance we saw was excellent. In a harrowing coincidence, Julie (whose flight had been delayed four hours) arrived just in time for the curtain, storing her luggage in a usher's closet.

4) Our first night out as a group since January: a rip-roarin' good time at the Redback worthy of our best nights last summer.

Saturday saw us hitting up Hyde Park again to partake in our favorite London tradition: squirrel feeding.

Adam, however, took a shining to another kind of wildlife: pigeons.

After a trek through the city and a snack at my second-favorite place for lunch in London (the World Food Cafe in Neal's Yard), we played on the lions in Trafalgar Square, dragged our weary feet through the British Museum, and wearily wondered what to do next.

Dinner was just the thing. I've always been suspicious of chains like Bella Italia, but my reservations were completely unfounded: our meal was fantastic (possibly the best of the whole trip) and the bottles of rosé helped too. I've never really cared for wine, but that night was a turning point: the first time I've actually enjoyed it, and the first of several affectionately-named 'wino nights' of the trip. Again, an epic, summer-grade night ensued!

On our last day in London (as a whole group), we did the two biggest attractions: the Tower of London and the London Eye.

One last thing: our plan was to pack and catch a late-night screening of Bruno. While packing, however, we discovered that we had run out of time. We would need to leave immediately to make the showing we had planned on, and we weren't packed. We sat wondering what to do, whether to go to a later show or not at all, when Teriann had a brilliant idea: "Guys, let's go right now!" We looked at each other for a second, and burst into motion, pulling on shoes and frantically grabbing keys. Sure, we only got about two hours of sleep before getting on the early train to Paris the next morning, but hey — what else is vacation for?

Cambridge

2009-08-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

Teriann and I weren't really planning on doing anything this weekend. But then our friend Mary, who has been studying in Cambridge for the past five weeks but is going back home tomorrow, said we should come up for a Saturday. What were we gonna say... no? We haven't seen that much of the UK outside London anyway (so far only Bath and Brighton) so off we went.

Mary was a terrific tour guide (I love traveling with a local), but even so we didn't do too much of the touristy stuff most people do; we didn't go in King's College (the choir only sings during term time) or Trinity College. Instead, we had a few drinks at the Anchor (the pub in which Pink Floyd was formed) and took a cruise down the river in a boat specific to Cambridge and the shallow River Cam: a punt. A punt is a completely flat boat that is propelled by a long stick — like a gondola. Punting is a centuries-old tradition in Cambridge, so why not join in?

Incidentally, if Brighton has seagulls, Cambridge has bees; they're absolutely everywhere, including on our punt and inside the Anchor.

One of the coolest things to see was the Mathematical Bridge, which, when it was built, didn't need bolts or fasteners of any kind to support someone walking across it. Students took it apart, however, to find out how it was built, and couldn't get it back together again. Here it is (with bolts, of course).

To walk on it, however, one has to enter Queen's College; so armed with our liquid courage from the Anchor, we snuck in to evade the four or five pound charge. Ha! Stick it to the man!

Brighton I and II

2009-07-31T14:39:00.006-07:00

Recently, I found myself in Brighton twice within a short span of time.

The first time was near the end of June; the Ionian Singers were giving a concert at a church there, and Teriann and I thought we'd take the rest of the day to have a look around the popular seaside town.

We started with the Royal Pavilion, a Chinese-inspired summer home for one the many royals with more money than they knew what to do with. The outside was kitschy and mostly under scaffolding,

but the inside was spectacular. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but the dining room was probably one of the most dramatic rooms I've ever seen: tall, deep red, and beneath a chandelier held in the claws of a massive and surprisingly lifelike dragon.

The main attraction in Brighton, though, is without a doubt its beach and the colorful Brighton Pier.

Brighton is a zany place: haunted houses and carnival rides are mixed in with tarot consultants on the pier; the beach is made up not of sand, but of smooth, cobblestone-size stones that are surprisingly comfortable to lay on; there's a large gay and alternative community in the town that is served by the kind of record shops that have different sections for 'Soul', 'Diva Soul', and 'Funky Soul' and have all but gone extinct elsewhere; it's a California hippie town where Kerouac would be right at home... but it happens to be on the South coast of England.

So when Adam was here, I suggested we take a day trip down there, and two weeks after my first trip, I was back in the ocean.

Adam found the water quite chilly!

One last bit about Brighton: anyone's visit there wouldn't be complete unless they were ATTACKED BY THE INCREDIBLY VICIOUS SEAGULLS! When Teriann and I were there, we got hamburgers on the pier for lunch, and not 10 seconds passed before a seagull swooped from behind me and stole the top of my bun! Sure enough, two weeks later, Adam was ambushed by an aggressive gull for the cup of cockles he was holding (cockles are small, tasty mollusks). Even the most wary visitors invariably let their guard down momentarily, and when they do —swoop! You see tourists pelted by the big white birds all day.

Adam Comes to Visit

2009-07-31T12:59:00.012-07:00

At the end of June, we moved out of our room of ten months and directly upstairs to a new room. Same home, same housemates (mostly), but a different and cheaper room.

We were quite happy about this, but it was slightly disorienting when Adam arrived the next day. Fortunately we didn't spend too much time among the stacks and boxes and suitcases; instead, we got straight out to the world's original and best tennis tournament: Wimbledon.

I've never even been that into tennis, but I still watched Wimbledon over the summer as a kid. And Adam played tennis for several years in high school, so it certainly meant more to him. Here we are at Centre Court.

We took a few wrong turns on the way there, but we were well equipped with food, drink, and sunscreen. Britain was deep in the throes of Murray Mania, so even though Andy Murray was the guy we really wanted to see, we counted ourselves lucky to watch Roger Federer warm up. He had already won five Wimbledon titles and, two days after our visit, won this year's tournament as well.

We also took in a juniors' semi-final match courtside.

This guy ended up winning the men's junior title.

Between the courtside beers and our very classy matching hats (more on that later), it was a great day out. The grounds were crammed to capacity, and I can only imagine how crazy it would have gotten had Murray won; unfortunately, Roddick beat him, so it was an uninspired trudge off the grounds that afternoon.

Fourth of July weekend was the first in what was to become a long string of great weekends. We decorated our house in American flags, Adam brought red cups for a genuine, long-overdue, and extremely popular tournament of beer pong, and a night of merry-making was had by all. Allison, our English flatmate, contributed with an impressive assortment of fireworks... we even threw a frisbee around down at the local park — it felt like a real Fourth of July!

While we mostly lounged around the house and the local park over the weekend, the next week was more eventful. It kicked off with Fellows' Night at the RCM, where the outstanding Ossian Ensemble premiered a short piece I wrote for them to celebrate the anniversaries of Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Purcell. After the concert, I was lucky enough to meet Graeme Napier, a Minor Canon at Westminster Abbey and a truly extraordinary person. The next night I had already been invited to a kind of delayed Fourth of July party at his home on the grounds of the Abbey. Most of the guests were Americans of some sort, and all were interesting in some way — a human rights lawyer who spends most of her time in war zones, priests who make fun of praying in Latin, a sculptor, a few people from the American embassy. Of course I'm not doing any of them justice in this short setting, but trust me: it was the most eclectic conversation I've ever had. After dessert (accompanied, as were all the courses, by its own wine), Graeme proved that none of us knew the words to our own anthem. We all assured him that we did, but when the time came, sure enough... we cracked.

O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? ...(awkward silence)...

Here's a nighttime picture of the Abbey I snapped on the way out.

What a Month! / Meeting John Joubert

2009-07-31T01:08:00.006-07:00

July has truly been an extraordinary time.

It started with Adam coming to visit, to which we added five more visitors and a two-week trek across some of the most incredible places in Europe. And it ended with an interesting day yesterday in which I met John Joubert and starting reading Herman Hesse's final work, The Glass Bead Game.

More on all this later; I'd like to be as thorough with this month as I have been with our previous travels, so please excuse me if it takes a bit more time than usual.

As a general overview, we went to Paris for Bastille Day, then flew down to Rome; from there we went up through Italy, seeing Florence, Vernazza, and Pisa before coming home.

About yesterday, however: I went up to Birmingham (a dreary industrial city if ever there was one) to meet with a very accomplished and, in my opinion, underrated composer, John Joubert. I first came across his work while singing in the Ionian Singers — we did a piece of his called Lines from the Youth of Man that is probably one of my favorite pieces of choral music ever. Thereafter, I conducted his Octet on a chamber concert and gave a small presentation about his music for an assignment at the College. He has an impressive (both in quantity and quality) output and to me his music sounds like a happy mix of Britten and Hindemith (although he'd say Shostakovich) with just enough attention to major chords and sweet sounds to really make all the quartal harmonies mean something.

I played some of my pieces for him (which I gather he neither loved nor hated) but mostly we just chatted for an afternoon. He's a very kind man — when he discovered that I'd booked a specific train home to London (which is much cheaper than 'open return' tickets), he drove me to the station so I wouldn't miss it by taking the bus.

Something in particular that he said got me thinking; he was talking about how he constantly revises his works — sometimes even after they're published. Maybe that's another flaw in my own work, as I rarely do any substantial revision. More than just the immediate (and obvious) effect it would have on my music, it suggests a level of rigor and self-examination that I would like to be able to achieve.

And this is no doubt connected to the book I recently began: Hesse's Glass Bead Game. It is every bit as brilliant and nourishing as I had hoped. It's one of those books that I'm disappointed no one told me about when I was younger, and that, like Ishmael, holds the wisdom that I always hoped the Bible would when I was a child. I'm sure that before long I'll bore you with some of the points it raises — already there are things that I love and things with which I disagree — but that's for later. For now, I'll get to work on recounting my July expeditions :)

June Has Many Faces

2009-06-30T08:56:00.004-07:00

This has been a strange month.

It began with school's two last deadlines, which I was glad to be rid of.

Then came our anniversary and our wonderful trip to Neuschwanstein — surely that was one of the best travel experiences we have had. Teriann's birthday, too, was fun, complete with a wacky weekend that included our first trips to the Borough Market (like nothing I've ever seen) and Harrod's (more malachite than southern Utah), and an unexpected run-in with hundreds of naked people riding bikes.

I was then hurled into full-time work at Lo-Max. It's good to have something steady, and while the income is much needed, it doesn't exactly leave me with loads of time for writing. In fact, I've done almost nothing compositionally in the last month or so — which is all the more disappointing because I was determined to work hard through June so that I could 'take July off' so to speak. As it is, I won't have very much time for writing in July, so that's valuable time wasted. I told myself this before I moved but it hasn't changed: work ethic is the biggest obstacle preventing me from moving up to the next level. Why haven't I listened to myself?

This has also been an extremely sad month: Joey died on Friday. There's no need to recount much here: either you have (or have had) a dog that you love(d) very much and you know how difficult their death can be — or you don't.

Overall, though, June has been a month of expectation. Waiting. Waiting to hear about funding for next year. Waiting to hear about whether my job will be able to keep me on next year (confound the credit crunch!). Most of all, waiting to see people from home: some of our closest friends are coming to visit for almost the entire month of July — a tantalising proposition when it's just around the corner.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

2009-06-11T03:46:00.022-07:00

It wasn't long after we moved to London that we started thinking about what we should do for our first wedding anniversary. The initial plan was to go to Euro Disneyland outside Paris. But then, I had the idea that we should visit the real thing — the castle on which Walt Disney based his design for Sleeping Beauty castle — Neuschwanstein. Plus, it had always been on Teriann's list of places she wanted to go because her parents had a big picture of it on their bedroom wall for years.

Neuschwanstein (new swan stone/building) was built by the 'mad' King Ludwig of Bavaria in the late 1800s. Because it's not actually that old, it is in relatively pristine condition and makes the castles and fantasies of Disneyland seem miniscule.

To get there, we had to fly to Munich, a proposition that was laden with problems. Our flight was delayed several hours, and then the train from the airport to the city center was delayed. By the time we got there, we only had two hours before we had to get a train to Füssen, the nearest town to the castle with a railway station. It didn't matter that much anyway, since it was pouring rain. I still managed to grab a bratwurst and a delicious wheat beer!

Oh, how I love Germany.

We popped in a few churches (the famous twin-domed Frauenkirche is pointless but the barrel-vaulted St. Michael's is quite beautiful) and hopped on a train. Two travel-weary hours later, we arrived in Füssen, a cozy little town with a surprisingly turquoise river and not much else.

We had dinner at the restaurant in our hotel (delicious, of course!) and the next morning, our anniversary, took an early morning bus to the little tourist town at the foot of the mountain: Hohenschwangau.

Hohenscwhangau is probably one of the most quaint, beautiful towns I've ever seen. I could probably sit for days in a cafe or beer garden, looking up at the castle on the hill.

Okay, I should explain that across the valley from Neuschwanstein, there's another castle, Hohenschwangau Castle. Hohenschwangau, however, is also the name of the little town that lies in the valley between the two castles. To do the tour, you start with Hohenschwangau Castle and then make the trek up the mountain to Neuschwanstein.

So we started with Hohenschwangau Castle, which is no slouch itself. This is where Ludwig (the guy who built Neuschwanstein) grew up and lived most of his life.

To give you some sense of distance, here's a pic of Neuschwanstein on the next mountain over.

Also in the valley between the castles, at the end of town, is Alpsee (Alpine lake). The tall mountains in the background are in Austria.

From there, a bus took us up the mountain to the most popular lookout point for Neuscwanstein: Mary's Bridge (most pictures you'll find of the castle are taken from the next mountain over, which is considerably more difficult to get to). We were giddy with anticipation, because you can't see the castle as you approach the bridge. You see people ahead of you walk onto the bridge, though, watching their expressions change in amazement. At last we turned the corner and saw...

...scaffolding!

Yes, the entire side was under scaffolding. I'll admit my initial feeling was something like disappointment, but these pangs were superficial: even partially covered, it is a magnificent and awe-inspiring sight.

Still, we felt compelled to take this picture.

The whole region is incredibly photogenic, and even walking to the castle I couldn't resist snapping pics.

The view of Hohenscwhangau below.

And then we could touch it!

And then we were at the entrance!

And then we were in the courtyard!

Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us take pictures inside (I did sneak one but it didn't turn out), so here's some I found online. Absolutely unbelievable...

And there was even a cave!

All in all, I must say that it exceeded my expectations. It is an incredible and unique creation, and one that stimulates the imagination as much as the eyes.

Still reeling, we hiked back down through Pollatt's gorge, which, even had there not been a magnificent castle above us, had some great scenery.

The gorge trail led us back to Hohenschwangau, where we had lunch (fantastic, need I even mention?). And just before we reluctantly got back on the bus (to get back to the train to get to Munich), Teriann took what I think is our best photo of the castle:

We ended up in Munich with, again, only a few hours to spare, so after a quick (and forgettable) jaunt through the City Museum, we settled down for dinner in probably the best-known beer hall in the world: the Hofbräuhaus. What a way to end a spectacular trip, and, more importantly, a spectacular year.

As always, here's the link to the facebook album.

That Just Happened

2009-06-09T09:43:00.002-07:00

For years I have been puzzled and enamored with the sensation that accompanies the passing of time. You spend so much time planning something and looking forward to it, that when it actually happens, it's almost surreal. Just such an event has me thinking a lot about that particular sensation:

Today was my last lesson with Joseph Horovitz. It's hard to believe that it's over, given that I first set my sights on studying with him almost two full years ago. Of course it wasn't always what I had expected, but it's still quite a kick that now, rather than saying, 'I am planning to study...' or 'Currently, I am studying...', I can say, 'I studied with Joseph Horovitz.'